


The Devil's Pit

by daaarkknight (orphan_account)



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Clark Is a Puppy, Fluff, M/M, Possibly Unrequited Love, Slow Burn, WIP
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:14:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 20,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22464700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/daaarkknight
Summary: After tracking Superman down to Smallville, Batman goes undercover as a laborer at Kent farm. But things get complicated when he begins to fall for the dorkiest farmboy in the world...Clark may or may not have the hots for Bruce. Bruce may or may not be a masochist. The world's cutest lovers may stand a chance. Then again, they may not.
Relationships: Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne
Comments: 16
Kudos: 105
Collections: 8. Gotham ships Bruce Wayne x Batman, Batman, Favorite Batman Fics, batman orignal characters





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mithen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/gifts), [FabulaRasa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FabulaRasa/gifts), [LemonadeGarden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LemonadeGarden/gifts), [Unpretty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unpretty/gifts).



> This work will be continuously updated for a few days, so if it strikes your fancy, keep in touch!

**** _Clark_

It’s a cold day. There is ash on the farm, where the maize cobs, remnants of the harvest, have been burned away. The ash is soft as soot, and the wind sweeps it into swirls and eddies, raising it into the air like fine coffee grounds. The tractor lies in the foreground, one hulking chunk of metal and chrome.

Clark stands with his hands in his pockets against the rickety fence, looking out at the farm. A drowsy breeze blows out his hair, forming a halo around his head. He absentmindedly pats it down. A wordless void fills him up as he looks out into the bronze of the field, the flying husk collecting at the horizon, the wide fence enclosing the land. It reminds him of some distant country, foreign every time.

It was only last year. But it feels so long ago now.

Something about wide open spaces will always carry a reminder for him. Like a blood clot in his head.

His father had been working in just such an open farm, planting bushes, hacking away at bracken, doing whatever he did in the middle of the day. And then he had looked up. And seen it heading straight for him.

A long, black tornado, snaking its way across the plains, like a vertical tunnel, pendant from a funnel of clouds piled high up into the heavens. The dust must have blinded his eyes as he turned to run. But the twister had followed his zigzagging course; had somehow conspired to catch up to Jonathan Kent. And lift him up—along with the tress and the sheds and the outhouses—high, high, into the air.

Clark wonders what his father felt, in the last moments of his life.

Did he feel amazingly small, as he looked down and saw the countryside, the tress like ants, their house the size of a squat lego brick, the eel roads?

Did he want to tell Clark anything, with his last breath?

Clark blinks away brine. Crying didn’t help then.

It wouldn’t now.

_Bruce_

He screams. He screams. He screams.

He runs. He runs. He runs.

He wakes. He wakes. He wakes.

Over, over, and over.

He runs. His footfalls are quiet as the night itself, he flies like a thin blade through the angled dark of the city, speckled by light here and there: fireflies in a night forest. The luminous darkness envelopes him, making him liquid shadow.

He flies from one rooftop to another, his sleek cape flying behind him, in a shadow which fits him better than his own. Bruce feels a deep tiredness in his bones. Like a drag on a racing car. Each day he trains and gets stronger, but each the day the toll builds on more heavily. It wears him down, like one of those granite gargoyles, chipped away and broken with time and age. Not all things come out of the test of time unscathed.

Bruce reaches home. It’s a long day. But there’s more.

He sits down at the bank of monitors. Alfred emerges.

“Master Bruce. I believe it’s time to retreat for the night.”

“Yes, Alfred.”

But he doesn’t. He sits staring at the screen, the blue light washing over his features.

And that’s when he sees it. The news that has been blaring the world over, all night, on every news channel. A blazing apartment building in Metropolis—put out by a gust of icy wind. Children crying, being deposited in the waiting arms of firemen, in their parents’. The blur of blue and red, flashing across the screen, seems like a multicolored gust of wind—nobody can make out what is going on, or who it is that is saving them…whether man or woman, or even human, all that the blurry video can capture are cheers, exclamations: look, look!

That was the first occurrence.

Every subsequent occurrence is heralded by more gusto. Sometimes it’s a bridge. Or a kitten. Or a giant test robot gone rogue.

And the Daily Planet has a name for it.

“Superman.”

Bruce’s mouth twitches as he examines these photographs and video feeds, pausing them inch by inch, frame by frame. But he is not able to resolve the grainy images. The man (for man it definitely is) is always moving too fast. His body is sometimes well-defined, but his face is a blur. Bruce suspects he is purposely moving his face at a speed so as to confuse cameras. He doesn’t appear to be wearing a mask of any kind.

Why not?

Bruce concentrates on Gotham, pushing Superman to the back of his mind.

It is with the third drug cartel that things get really ugly. He comes back with two fractures and one laceration down his side, losing blood at an alarming rate like a fountain. Alfred patches him up, but the look in his eye clearly shows what he thinks of this situation.

Still, that doesn’t stop Bruce. The thugs are always worse off than he is. It becomes a cycle. He doesn’t use guns, but the darkness in him insists on spilling out of every pore, seeping out of every crack. Every time he punches some thug, causes someone pain, he feels a jolt in his body, but he is not able to stop.

Then one day, when he is stopping a gang from robbing a chemical factory, he accidentally ends up scaring one of the thugs wearing a red bucket right off the platform and into a green chemical vat.

That is the day he decides he needs help.

And who better than Superman? The guy who saves kittens and carries old women across streets?

Who better than Superman to keep him on the straight and narrow?

And it’s not like the guy wouldn’t stand to benefit from the arrangement. Bruce has noticed that lately the ‘test robots’ produced by LexCorp have been taking Superman down with greater and greater ease—Bruce’s off-site hypothesis is that the greenish glow could possibly be emitting some radiation…

So he does his research. He calculates all Superman’s appearances, the time between the emergency and the rescue. Drawing a map tracing different epicenters is not hard. It turns out that Superman seems to respond quickest to emergencies in Metropolis and Kansas City, but the farther away you got from the edges of these cities, the longer he took to respond. It was hardly a time gap of significance, but still.

Now all he needed to triangulate the likely location was a third point of reference.

Three days later, a fire breaks out in the warehouse district in Gotham. It’s abandoned, but Superman arrives there within five seconds and puts it out.

Bruce puts in the third set of coordinates in the triangulation algorithm. And voila!

The result is not what he had expected.

A small, out-of-the-way town called Smallville, between Kansas City and Metropolis, is the epicenter of the rescues.

_Smallville._

Could a name get any more self-deprecating?

Bruce’s objective is to befriend Superman. Then find out everything about him, including if he would be a worthy ally. Trust is crucial.

And all this without being seen for who he is.

Matches Malone arrives in Smallville one day later.

Smallville is quaint, but not in the way that would occasion any remark. Passersby don’t stop for the local sightseeing. There are no souvenir shops or antique stores or town heritage sights.

Is Superman a civilian here?

Very likely.

In fact, the balance of probability, the hunch in Bruce’s stomach says, is that Superman was _born_ here. He doesn’t know how he arrived at this conclusion, except by looking at storefronts with the same square old-fashionedness as he has come to associate with his prospective ally. The large fields of wheat and corn might appeal to a man who likes clear sightlines. Like a pilot. Or a flyer.

Matches Malone arrives looking for work. He is a gentleman tramp (Bruce cannot shake off the gentleman, no matter how much he tries). Let people make whatever backstory they may—runaway, deserter. Now all he has to look out for is town legends, strange folk, happenings which wouldn’t go unnoticed in a town like this.

But first, he needs to find a job.


	2. Chapter 2

_Clark_

Isn’t any harm in the guy. But Clark has no idea where the day flows when he is around. The man has large, flowing muscles, the stride of an ox. The few times that Clark has caught sight of him, the man has quickly looked away. But Clark catches a flash of blue, as unearthly as the moon.

He obeys orders without a word. Clark and Matches work side by side, next to the giant shells of metal, sweating as they bind sheaves of corn, the kernels as golden as pineapple, their hands sometimes brushing, a bare, light touch. But it feels like lightening. Clark straightens, looks around, takes off his hat whenever Matches’ knuckles end up touching his. A strange sort of heat overtakes him, like his body has gone into overdrive, and he needs to kick something, drink something, do something. He can’t understand it.

“Where do you hail from, sir?” Clark asks one day, when they are sipping cold beer sitting on the hot porch. Ma's baking banana bread--the mouthwatering smell wafts out to the front, flooding Clark's nostrils. Matches’ shirt is half undone from the top; his chest sparkles in a sheen of sweat. Clark looks away and swallows.

“’M not from nowhere now.” Matches downs the rest of his beer in one large gulp. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

“But where’re your folks?” Clark insists.

Matches looks at him. “Dead. They’re dead.” 

Clark looks away, into the distance. At the horizon, vast grey stretches of plain swallow a pale red sun.

“I’m sorry.”

He breaks out another beer from the cooler and offers it to Matches. Matches grins.

“Bring it on, boss.”

“Call me Clark,” says Clark.

“Clark.” Matches rolls the name around on his tongue. It sounds exotic coming from his mouth. “Pretty name.”

Is it Clark’s imagination or did Matches’ voice just drop a few octaves lower? Clark feels something stirring below his belt at the sound of it, like whiskey and gravel. He immediately sticks his legs together, and hopes Matches didn’t notice. He can’t believe this is happening.

“My mother,” says Matches, looking into the distance, “also made great banana bread.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Between us, that was about the only thing she made that was good. She was a horrible cook,” Matches laughs. When he laughs, his face crinkles up. But somehow he looks the gruffer for it—his skin is like old leather, and it looks like it has seen lots of seasons, both good and bad. And yet it looks—young, somehow. No. Ageless. Like it could be very young, or very old. Or both.

“I’m sorry,” says Clark belatedly. He doesn’t remember if he said sorry before.

“Naw, I should be the one says sorry,” Matches says. “Rattling on about my mama when nobody asked for it.” He sets his can down.

“Jesus,” says Clark. “Hey—no. I love hearing about mothers. Pretty much anyone’s mom is my favorite topic.”

“ _Really._ ”

“Yeah! It’s been so long, it’s just…I think about my mom too sometimes. My original one.”

Matches looks somewhat bemused.

“I wasn’t born here. I was…” Clark leans toward him before he says the word, like it’s dirty. “Adopted.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Huh.” Matches sounds like Clark just told him he came from the moon.

“You remember them?” Matches asks after awhile.

Clark leans back on the square wooden post, folding his arms behind his head. He sighs.

“No,” he answers after sometime. He feels somehow like he shouldn’t have let this information slip. But it’s too late now. And what could he get from it anyway?

Matches’ eyes seem to gleam for a moment before subsiding. 

Clark can’t figure out himself. This much is normal, he has been assured by Martha. Life goes on. No one knows what it is like to be lonely, so lonely. Everyone’s lonely is different.

But Matches’ loneliness is something of a mirror image. Like something held by the dark in Clark’s mind, like a looking glass in a fairytale, asking him the one question he could never answer.

_Will I ever find someone who will take this burden of me? If only…if only just for a while?_

_Will I ever find someone to carry this with me?_

And Matches’ answering eyes seem to say _yes._

Yes to everything.

* * *

_Bruce_

Smallville, unbeknownst to Bruce, has started growing on him. The hazy bushes, the warmth of the endless oceans of wheat when he walks through them, his hand outstretched, the sun throwing an apologetic glare of opal washing over him and everything around him, not hot but not quite warm—that somewhere in between that seems such a trademark temperature here. The study barnhouses, firm as oaks, the stars rising whitewashing the sky in mist—and Bruce has never seen so many stars in his life, has never really had the opportunity to just sit back and stare. A small wistful part of him wants and wishes he could just be thrown aboard here, and drift, all his endless years…like a shipwrecked man out at sea. He came here to find Superman. But he finds himself falling in love with…Smallville.

So far Superman shows no sign of showing up in Smallville. Any Smallville emergencies are small. But Bruce finds himself more and more entranced by a simple mama’s boy called Clark—drawn into tighter and tighter confidences, spooling out of his backbones and crushing them together, almost surprisingly against his will—Clark, who is full of surprises and promise, as Bruce touches his hand, accidental brushes of skin against skin, feels so…strange is hardly the word. It feels grotesque, manic, like Bruce’s face and bones are screaming, bursting spontaneously into flames everytime Clark even comes near. Every inch of his body wants to be Clark, near Clark, in Cark, somewhere around Clark, crawling all over Clark—and he doesn’t even know why, is the worst part. Was his subconscious telling him something? But no. It couldn’t be.

Superman _couldn’t_ be Clark.

Why?

Because Clark is as Kansas as they come, that’s why. Because his hair is the night, and his eyes are stars. Because his skin is earth, and smells of peaches. Because his armpits smell of sawdust, when he’s standing on a stool, reaching into the rafters to fix the lightbulb that Bruce had ‘accidentally’ shortcircuited, just so he could see Clark climb up there in his rattan overlong navy-blue pajama bottoms and his stupid white vest. So Bruce could see this farmboy climb and fix a lightbulb.

“I ain’t gonna lie,” Clark told him today.

“I just want to lie here sometimes and not go anywhere. Like, for the rest of my life.”

It was exactly what was passing through Bruce’s heart at that time. But how had a yokel reached into his heart and lucked out his soul?

So okay, maybe ‘yokel’ was pushing it. Clark’s more than well-read—he’s astonishingly well-read. Bruce can see the neon-blue of his eyes flashing as he would talk about Dostoevsky and Plath, his favorite authors, how he thought they mirrored each other, how Plath had sentenced herself to death rather than live in the hell her life had created, much like Raskolnikov…

"All great tales are tragedies," Clark says one night. His eyes are set back, studded with fierce stars. His face is all sharp planes, reflected in the moonlight. He has given Bruce his attic in the shed to sleep. It's cozy, and he calls it a 'fortress of solitude', which only makes it quirkier. Bruce rolls around in Clark, sleeps in Clark. Every night. 

But the downside of this very cozy arrangement is that Clark Kent feels entitled to intrude whenever he has a moral or metaphysical epiphany. Which is a lot.

Okay, so maybe this isn't a _downside_ as such. 

"Was asleep," Matches mutters, pulling his pillow over his face. 

"Oh. Right. Sorry." Clark beats a hasty retreat. 

"Good night." he breathes, while going down. He looks back over his shoulder. Bruce is looking at him, all his softness in his eyes and his breath. 

"Goodnight." Matches grumps. 


	3. Chapter 3

_My longing for you--  
too strong to keep within bounds.  
At least no one can blame me  
when I go to you at night  
along the road of dreams.  
\--Ono no Komachi_

The ground is shimmering with summer heat. An ocean of dead machine dust lies flat and and appealing face-up towards the sky, it's graininess all covered by a sheer placid sheen. Bruce sits atop the crankiest tractor he's ever seen in his life. It looks like the offspring of a macaroon and a battleship--valves stick out of the radiator systems; rust chokes the steel and chrome rims of the tires. Clark sits next to him, contentedly munching rice crispies. He's not offering Bruce. For some reason this irritates Bruce, like he's invisible, or something. 

Bruce reaches out and snatches the crumbly bag from Clark's hand, and stuffs a handful into his mouth. Shit. He doesn't even like rice crispies. Why is it that he felt he had to prove a point?

Bruce is irritated. Maybe it's the heat. Maybe it's the faint scent of ozone emanating from Clark's shirt. Maybe it's the rice crispies. 

Maybe it's the fact that he still hasn't found Superman. Maybe it's the fact that he hasn't even started looking.

A sense of lethargy overcomes Bruce. Like a bone-deep ennui. He procrastinates, for the first time in his life. Tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow. 

There's no hurry. Why, tomorrow he'd go and and start conversations at the bar, looking for any family with a history of unnatural events. Tomorrow he'd look for the traces of the greatest hero the world has ever seen. 

  
Superman's profile grows ever greater, even as Bruce languishes in the dust and the heat, next to the tractor-farmboy, listening to his stories, laughing at his jokes, or even at his not-jokes. 

Maybe he's procrastinating because he knows.

Once he finds Superman...

Clark Kent will be gone. 

* * *

"You comin' to the festival tonight?" Clark asks, jumping off the tractor and wiping his mouth. A small amount of yellow grease still adheres to the corner of his lower lip. 

Bruce jumps off too. "No."

"C'mon," Clark nudges him with an elbow. Bruce winces. "The entire town will be there!" 

At this Bruce's ears perk up. _The entire town._

That includes Superman. 

Maybe??

It's not too much to hope.

Is it?

"A fair's not my place, mister," says Bruce, wiping grease off the radiator with a scratchy horse blanket. The sticky grease gets on Bruce's fingers, then his shirt, while Clark smiles at his...for lack of a better word, outright incompetence. 

"It's not a fair." Clark makes a face. " _C'mon_." He wheedles, like a little child pulling his mother's hand. "Y'know you wanna go." One side of his mouth turning up in a seductive smirk.

At once Bruce has the overwhelming urge to wipe off his smile with a kiss, laden with all his affection, all his warmth. A kiss to end all kisses. Clark leans forward, and Bruce can see into his shirt, can see his tight, tight abs, his beautiful chest curls, his...

Bruce turns away. 

"Alright," he begrudges grudgingly. He'd already given in. Of course. Clark knows.

"Not for the rides, mister." Bruce wags his finger. "We need some new horse blankets for the barn." He points to the old ones, all covered with grease, thrown at their feet. Clark's eyebrow skate disapprovingly. Bruce smirks.

"A good enough reason as any," Clark shrugs. "We used to have horses, y'know," he adds, pointing to the old disused stirrups and bridle resting in the cobwebs behind the tools. 

"What happened to them?"

"The day my dad died. They...you know. Took flight. Horses are sensitive that way."

Horses taking flight before a tornado? Not unheard of. But Bruce wonders. That phrasing fans a glowing ember in his brain. 

"They take flight literally?" Bruce asks, his eyes all idle curiosity. 

Clark looks at him, startled. "What do you mean?" 

"I mean, y'know." Bruce takes out a cigarette. He lights it. Flicks the match. Sticks his hands in his pocket. "Been hearing these stories 'round these parts." 

"What stories?"

"Things flying here. After dark."

"Don't know what you're talking about," Clark says, his eyes wide open. "Don't you think if there was a town legend, townsperson here would know about it first?" he pats his chest. 

"Sometimes in broad daylight. Happened in Metropolis. Gotham too. Can't see why it couln't happen here." 

Clark exhales. "You mean...that super...uh...whatitsname." 

"Superman." Bruce eyes Clark from under the shadow of his lashes. "Pretty awesome, huh?"

"Yeah." says Clark dully. "Yeah. Pretty awesome." 

And then Bruce remembers. Why Clark is so dull. Things flying. Jonathan Kent. Flew. 

"Oh shit. Oh shit oh shit so sorry man." Bruce wants to slap himself. "Just remembered about your dad. Sorry." 

""S okay. Suppose he wasn't flying here that day." Clark's shoulders have hunched over.

Clark's entire frame breaks down; he turns away from Bruce, towards the darkness of the barn. Bruce can see something wracking his shoulders.

He doesn't know what to do. All he knows is, if he were like that, he would want someone to hold him. 

So he holds Clark. 

He goes over and wraps his arms around Clark. Bruce guesses this is technically a hug, given that his arms are around the man, the big, burly six two, two hundred eighty pounds of ripe muscles- man. Who has broken down because of Bruce's stupidity. Bruce, immediately upon initiating the hug, realizes he has no notion of how to proceed, or how long to keep in position.

"It's okay," he says, soothingly, like Alfred used to when comforting him after a nightmare. (Atleast he _hopes_ his voice comes across as soothing.) "It's okay. It wasn't anybody's failure. These things aren't your fault, Clark. Listen to me. I know."

"And _how_ would you know?" Clark sniffs, then tries to pretend he didn't. "Huh? _Tell_ me that!"

"Because I couldn't save somebody very close to _me,_ " Bruce says, his face grave. " _My_ parents. I couldn't save them. They died in front of me."

Clark turns around. His face is streaked with tears Bruce wants to wipe away, wants to clean with his own two hands. 

"I'm sorry," Clark says. He awkwardly tries to pat Bruce. But Bruce's arms being around him makes the job slightly difficult.

He reaches around. But just then Bruce was going to drop his hands and the angle at which they are caught make this uncomfortably close...and Bruce is able to smell the Rice Crispies on Clark's breath and how a conversation about the Smallville farmer's festival turned into the World's Most Awkward Hug Ever is beyond him.

"Uhh..."

"Umm..."

They disentangle hastily, and look around, at the floor and the walls. Anywhere, really. Apart from each other.

"So."

"Yeah."

They look around some more. As far as the awkward-o-meter goes, this one has officially hit the roof, and has now taken off into deep space. Possibly to Jupiter. 

"Can you not mention to my mother that I cried?" Clark says, looking at Bruce's left sole. "She...worries." He asks this as if it was as easy for him as spitting out thorns out his gullet. "Like, at all."

Bruce looks at the man. He's a mess...but God, his flushed face and mussed up curls are doing things to him right now.... 

"Clark. Never will I mention anything to her that passes between us. Never."

"Huh. 

"Good." Clark seems to deflate with the lack of pressure. His face still looks sad. But it's the dead sad of so-long-ago, not the right-fucking-now sad of I'm-burning-up-alive. 

Bruce supposes this is progress.

* * *

The festival is basically a giant orb of bouncing lights and colors. Giant ferrywheels, giant hula hoops, giant spaceship merry-go-rounds. As far as Bruce can see, most of the people in attendance look ten years old or less.

"I used to sit in the spaceship," Clark says shyly, pointing at the flashy blur going around in circles. Shouts of excitement emanate from these earth bound vessels to the stars. 

"Okay."

Clark looks at him, a smile plastered on his face. Bruce senses the hidden edge. 

"You think I'm a dork, don't you."

Bruce sighs. 

"I think you're an extremely well-hidden _alien_ of a dork."

Clark looks hurt, and somewhat anxious. 

"Relax," says Bruce. "At least you're not a billionaire urban legend cosplaying as a vampire."

"What?" 

"Nothing," Bruce says. Clark looks at him like he's going crazy. 

"Sometimes I wonder," says Clark, and then stops, a puzzled look sliding onto his face as if from a projector. "Have I seen you somewhere? Like, before?" 

"Probable," says Bruce. "I'm famous."

_Careful. Another innuendo and you'll out yourself._

"You said this was a farmer's festival." Bruce says. 

"Wait. I'm serious," says Clark. He puts his finger on his nose, like he's holding an invisible opera glass. "I could swear it."

"Not improbable," says Bruce carelessly. "Used to be a swindler. You know, cheating old women out of their hard-earned bird cages and sewing machines. Probably seen me on the Wanted list."

"What were you doing with sewing machines?" asks Clark. He looks like he can't decide if he wants to make a fool of himself by believing Bruce or by not.

"Sewing," says Bruce seriously.

Clark bursts out laughing, bending over and clutching his stomach. Children mill around them.

"What's so funny?"

"How wanted are you?" Clark asks.

"Not very," Bruce admits. As he says this, he feels the ground growl beneath his feet. That's the truth, he thinks wonderingly.

That's the truth. 

"That's not true," Clark says softly.

He looks at Bruce. 

Bruce is the first one to look away. The intensity of Clark's gaze is one harsh force. An almost electric gleam resides in his eyes, rings of pure sapphire and silver dissolving, entering each other, intertwining.

"Your eyes are...something." Bruce rubs his eyes and blinks. He looks up. The stars are naked and few--two Alpha Centauris looks back at him.

"Yeah...uh...sorry." Clark says. He bites his lip and looks at the ground. The smell of bitter coffee dregs drifts out at him from a stall, where a giant polar bear hangs, taunting. A cluster of children stand around it, pointing and chittering like a nest of warblers.

"C'mon!" says Clark, pulling at Bruce's sleeve with no self-consciousness. "Let's do something fun."

Bruce follows his gaze and groans. 

"Tell me again," he says, "why I didn't stay home with your mother."

"Because you're a companionable fella?"

"Because you tricked me. I thought this was for adults."

"Matches, there _are_ adults. You just have to look to find them."

Bruce looks around. And sure enough, there are adults. There are chaperoning au pairs, there are harried housewives with their broods, there is the odd working-man trailing after. There are teenagers texting on cellphones while keeping one lazy eye on their pre-K siblings.

Bruce wants to slap Clark on the side of the head.

"Clark. Let's go home. Before someone realizes that we are the only two grown-ups here out of their own free will."

"Hey c'mon!"

"No!" Bruce is firm and serious. He puts his metaphorical foot down. Very seriously.

"But we haven't even been on the Meaty Mountain yet." Clark's eyes are doing things to Bruce. Not-good things.

"Why didn't you come with Lana?" Bruce demands. 

Clark looks away. 

"Or Pete?"

Clark starts walking away, towards the exit. He looks behind. "You're right. Let's leave."

"Hey!" Bruce has to jog to keep up. "Hey no wait, I didn't mean..."

"It's alright. You don't have to. I mean, you just reminded me of him, is all. But you're right. I'm a kid. I mean...I'm _not_ a kid. Anymore. So. Let's go."

"Wait, wait." Bruce holds up his hands. There are people shoving them from the entrance. Bruce pulls Clark aside.

"Tell me why this is so important," Bruce insists. His eyes quietly meet Clark's, there is a hesitancy in their gentle questing.

Clark's jaw and chin are set like granite. "I just thought it would be a nice place. To hang out."

"Okay," says Bruce. "Okay. So let's. Hang out."

"What?"

"I want to climb the Meaty Mountain," Bruce says. Then he winces. Clark shakes with laughter.

"Yup. You got it," he says, shaking his head. His face shines as he looks at Bruce, his teeth full and white.

Bruce rolls his eyes. "Let's go."

* * *

The Meaty Mountain is an entirely inappropriately named rollercoaster. For toddlers. 

"My dad used to bring me here," Clark says. He eyes it sorrowfully.

"There must be an adult version," Bruce chokes. _Why did you bring me here?_

But Clark is lost to the world. He only looks on as a row of tiny-tots in tutus and socks, with wagging tongues and open mouthed screams of theatrical terror, are slid into the cars by one-part-anxious-three-parts-relieved parents.

"Used to be me, " he says quietly

"Got it," says Bruce tartly. But Clark doesn't seem to notice.

"Do you think of it?" Clark asks. Bruce arches an eyebrow.

"How quickly it all passes."

"Life?"

"Everything."

Bruce looks around. Then he notices Martha Kent. Five meters away behind the cotton candy stand. She is--for lack of a better word--slinking. Bent halfway over, behind pink fluffy clouds of candy looking straight at Clark's back. Her eyes are red-rimmed. Her gray hair forms a striking, fragile halo around her face.

"My mom's behind me, isn't she?" Clark asks. Bruce rights himself.

"How did you know?"

"Because. That's what she does."

"Stalk you?"

"No. Try to keep a lookout. Ascertaining my state of mind."

"Oh. And why's that?"

But Bruce already knows the answer. Because he'd noticed. His mind, his stupid, blank mind, was willingly drawing him away from it, and he has to fight _towards_ it. Towards the eureka.

When Clark was bending over a haystack, his chest to the wind. He'd seen. 

A faint scar on Clark's chest. Like an empty pimple.

Or... 

Like a bullet. 

So Clark had shot himself. Okay. (Big deal.)

But who shoots themselves in the heart? And worse, who survives? 

_Clark Kent Clark Kent Clark Kent._

_Clark Kent, that's who._

So either Smallville has two mysteries....

Or it has only one. 


	4. Chapter 4

Bruce and Clark stare up at the night sky. 

It's filled with orange wisps, like celestial tongues of cold, baked fire, dancing in the galaxies.

"Wow."

"Yeah. Something, huh."

"How come this isn't on any brochures?" Bruce asks.

Clark shrugs. "Maybe Smallville doesn't like the company."

"What about me? Does Smallville like _me_?" Bruce asks. He angles his face away from Clark's and towards the firecracker display.

Clark looks at him. 

"Can't tell," he quips.

Suddenly there is a general exclamation and rising up. The overlong grasses moan and sizzle with light, the entire town standing up from the field and pointing. Clark stands up too, his face searching, his eyes narrowed. Bruce studies him minutely. 

This last study confirms all his suspicions. 

There is a face. It's called the victim face. 

Then there is a civilian face.

And then, there's a vigilante face. 

The face that asks, "What exactly is happening, and how much danger is everyone in?" 

Clark's face clearly belongs in the last category. He seems to be studying sightlines, exit points. Even his eyebrows grow busier, his face whiter. Cleaner. 

Bruce sees the transformation right before his eyes. Clark's hand reaches the two buttons of his shirt, resting there. Over the shirt fabric, itching to peel it away. 

The farmboy. 

_It was the farmboy. All along_ reminds Bruce's helpful subconscious. _Toljya. But would you listen?_

"Shut up." says Bruce out loud.

Clark looks down at him. 

"Hey, you're missing out."

"It's just a comet, Clark." It's not just a comet, though. It's a snowball on fire, iced and blazing. Its tail is brilliant, outshining all the remaining stars in its wake. The sky is alight in a blue-white milky wash. As the orb glows, tearing through the sky, the very torture of its layers is beautiful.

Its a meteor to end all meteors. 

_And_ it's unscheduled. Pure. Unnamed, unanticipated. 

"Yeah! Aren't you..."

"Excited?" It's hard to hear anything above the din of the crowd. The fireworks are forgotten. Nature, as usual, has outdone man.

"I've seen enough comets for ten lifetimes," Bruce says, obstinately sitting back on his palms when the rest of the town is up on its feet, pointing and chattering excitedly.

Not really. But he is more interested in studying the people of this town. Interesting folks. Small towners like any other. But look closely, and you see the pattern. The coalitions. The lines being drawn like cobwebs, enmeshing and closing around them. 

Bruce looks around for Martha Kent.

He finds her three heads behind them, her face clouded with the glow suffusing the heavens.

She doesn't seem to notice him looking at her. Her face is completely taken up by her son and the meteor. Her lips are moving. But Bruce can't read what she is saying.

He would be more far more surprised if he _could._

Bruce looks back at Clark. His shoulders have relaxed back into their sockets; he sits back down.

"Hah," Clark laughs nervously, wiping his forehead. A small sheen of sweat has covered it with beads.

"What was _that_ about."

"Nothing," Clark says. "Just...you know. We have a history of...meteorites. In this town."

"I didn't know." Bruce lies. "You seemed terrified."

"Yeah well," Clark says, irritable. "You wouldn't know the half of it."

"Oh _I'm_ sorry," Bruce says, backing away, holding up his hands. The hills gleam green once again, the unnatural bleach of the night sky dimming down into quiet. Instantly, people break out into giggles and shouts: relief mixed with a certain dim of disappointment.

"No _I'm_ sorry," says Clark. "I shouldn't be so...crude towards you. It's just that...I was born during one of these."

"A meteor shower?"

"Yeah. Except it was more...impactful."

"Impactful how?" Bruce asks, trying to keep his curiosity under check.

"Well, literally." Clark laughs. "There were _impacts."_

Bruce groans.

"Doesn't explain why you were terrified," he notes.

Clark looks at him, then. "Do you believe in fate?"

Bruce considers. 

"Yes," he answers simply. "But if you're going to feed me on some hogwash about how your life is connected to these _astral lines_ and how it _means_ something..."

"Save it," says Clark, peremptory. He looks disgusted. That he had even tried, _attempted._

 _"Hey._ Hey now. Don't."

"Don't what."

"Don't close up on me," Bruce urges. "Don't. Tell me what you were saying."

"Nothing. It's nothing." Clark looks away. 

"Okay. That's fine. Don't tell me. I'm just gonna head on home. There's a cute girl on your six who's been staring. Go say hi."

"Um...oh. That's Lana. From...school. You know."

"So go say hi." Bruce feels distinctly avuncular.

"Can't." Clark blushes. "I _can't."_

"Sure you can. Don't tell me Clark Kent has a case of the butterflies." Bruce stands up and holds out his hand. He doesn't know why he is pushing Clark towards the cheerleader-type with the smoky tan and the raven hair. All he needs to know is if he is right. If his gut feeling is right.

"No you don't understand," Clark says. "You don't understand."

"What don't I understand, Clark?" Bruce is still standing and trying to pull Clark up. Clark is substantial in his counter-force. Bruce wonders what they are looking like to passers-by. Nobody seems to care. Except Lana, who inches closer. 

"C'mon! Where's that party boy zest that dragged me to the fair?" 

"You don't understand," is all Clark volunteers.

"Clark!" Lana flounces over. She has _some_ cheek, Bruce thinks. Her ribboned hair flows over a floral dress that comes down to her knees. Every inch the girl next door. "You didn't call. I didn't know you'd be there!"

Bruce looks over at Clark. Clark is looking at the grass. But Lana is a well of patience.

Eventually he has to look up at her. 

"Hey, Lana," he says weakly.

Bruce sees that Clark's shyness is being misinterpreted by the cheerleader girl scout, as is always the case with the type, as an excess of interest.

"Won't you introduce me?" she asks, her cheeks blooming under her blush, pointing to Bruce.

"Oh. Right. Lana, this is Matches. Matches, Lana. She's a friend." Clark mumbles, getting up and dusting himself off, only to get an excuse, Bruce suspects, to talk to his shoes. 

Bruce notices the extra emphasis on _friend._ He wonders for whose benefit it was added.

"Hello," he says courteously, but not too courteously. He _is_ a farm labourer, after all.

Lana smiles. It's dazzling, hot white teeth, hot pink lips. However, Clark seems to take less notice, instead picking at the grass. 

But Lana is a steamroller. She takes Clark's arm. 

"Walk me home?" with another flutter of eyelash. Bruce gets the sense she doesn't know she is flirting or the embarrassment it is causing Clark.

Because of _course_ Clark would be embarrassed, the prig.

" _Sure,"_ Clark drawls. He takes her arm around him, tighter, starts walking away.

Bruce's eyeballs burn. It's a hot summer night, and suddenly he feels the warmth of it, creeping under his skin. His voicebox is dry.

"I should be getting home, mister."

Clark looks over his shoulder. He doesn't know what to say. 

"I'll catch up with you." he mouths, but Bruce has turned away. The lights and sounds of the human traffic all around him drowns his senses--the hum of it. He wants to lose himself in shadow and smoke. He looks up at the heavens for support, or sympathy, but they look down on him as distant as ever. Even the stars wink with mutual scorn. _Solve your own problems,_ they say. _Stop projecting your messes on us._

Bruce walks home along the longest route, enshrouding himself in the the chirp of cicadas and the smell of bluegrass, the ground crunching under his feet with each heavy stride. The route winds through several old outhouses and abandoned farms--remnants of a greater age. Dust rises and falls, falls and rises. The empty barnhouses call to Bruce with their loneliness, their desolation--like owls hooting at midnight.

Far away, the a cow bell tinkles.

Bruce doesn't see it, until it is right in front of him.

***********

A wino in need of a good, stiff drink, but short of cash, clad in green greasy overcoat and mismatched boots, one toe sticking out--decides to mug Batman--

Bruce hears footsteps behind him. And assuming it is Clark, waits for the man to catch up.

Except a thick, glutinous voice instead, slurring a little: hands up, mister!

Bruce turns around. It's the alley. 

The man is wearing a flat cap this time, he reeks of gin instead of garbage, but the same-old gun, the same old words, the same-old taste-in-mouth.

Like guns and oranges. Metal with a hint of citrus.

And he knows nine hundred ways of disarming the guy, without breaking a bone.

This time, it's different. 

Well. Except for the taste in his throat.

That's the same.

Bruce's head spins as he turns around, swinging and planting his foot firmly in the drunk's crotch. His head reels, even as the crook vomits out onto the concrete. He struggles for his bearings like a ship mooted in the middle of a waste dump, dirty, frothy water lurching him forward and back, backwards and forwards...like _he's_ the one drunk. His hands clench at his sides as the crook cries out in pain, holding his crotch and hopping from one foot to another.

The abandonment, the loss, the pain comes washing over him. Delirious and giddy, he turns over the wino with one foot, and plants the other in the small of his back. There is a tight _crunch._ Bruce leans down and removes the gun from the other man's grasp, and checks to see if there are rounds in the cartridge chamber.

There are.

It could have been anyone. Anyone. Man, woman or child. Or all three. It could have been a family instead of him. A family at the end of this gun, eating bullets out of the cold metal thing in his grasp...it could have been a child...

A red haze descends over his eyes as his foot descends with some force on the unfortunate drunk. He kicks the man's ribs viciously, with expert precision, coldly counting the number of broken bones to be expected. There are multiple crunches, and then a scream.

And then, there's a whoosh of air, whistling through the leaves. Like a thick thundercloud, bristling through the foamy air. And Bruce rises, powerless and weightless as a dead leaf, up up and up. 

The air stings his face, acrid as it is with leftover smoke from the fireworks. His hair is whipped into his eyes; they water from the acidic glare. His hands are pinned tightly to his side, his legs are folded up into a painful knot. He knows better than to resist.

Superman is called that for a reason, after all.

*************

The ground wheels up towards him. His eyes sting from the dust. He tries to whirl around, but Superman keeps one steady hand on his back, keeping him facing forward. Bruce's irritation, along with his hackles, start rising. He squirms and pushes against the firm, broad chest, as they fly lower and lower to the ground. Superman flies in circles, like a honeybee buzzing around a flower. Giving the parcel time to acclimatize.

Finally--touch down. 

"What did you think--who do you think you--how can you--who _are_ you to--" Bruce sputters. It's only a little bit of an act. But Superman takes off almost immediately, leaving Bruce to think about strong fresh hands holding him and the whisper of skin against silk...a chill passes through his body. He shivers gently, and attributes it to the gust of wind passing through the field.

The field.

Bruce looks around.

Just great. He is moored in the middle of nowhere. A plain stretches out around him, blue under the silver sliver of moon. Grasses ebb and flow like wind; their tinsel tips touch each other in delicate traceries, dancing with poise and restraint.

The bastard. 

Bruce looks around in the ocean of constellations. They glimmer, throwing faint shadows over the bowl of deep blue meeting the earth. Far in the distance he finds Polaris, her glow overshadowed by her big sisters, mauled in the pointing paws of Dubhe and Merak.

He starts walking. 

* * *

By the time he reaches Smallville, a rosy dawn has spread her wings over the town. Bruce climbs into the hayloft. The exercise has done him good, whatever Superman intended. 

He is looking forward to throwing himself on the makeshift bed, limbs asprawl, and sleeping soundly till noon. But who does he find waiting for him, except Clark Kent?

Clark's mouth is narrow, his jaw protruding. He looks pissed. Bruce's body, pleasantly tingling from the exercise, finds itself impelled towards the mattress, glaring Clark or no.

"Where were you?" asks Clark. 

"Beating up a wino," Bruce responds. He shakes his limbs heavily. In the small golden dimlight of the loft, he can see the old wooden chest with his things inside--locked and bolted. Someone has packed up. 

"Why," demands Clark, folding his arms. 

"Tried to mug me, the sonofabitch. Why, what's it to you _Kent_?"

Clark looks bemused for a split-second. Then he rights himself. "Was worried about you, is all. When you didn't show up."

He says this without so much as a blink. _Some liar_ , Bruce thinks. _One day, you'll fool the world._

"Okay. Well, I showed up now. Any chance I can get some sleep?" 

Clark turns around. Bruce immediately sinks down onto the mattress. He looks up at the giant beam crossing through the rafters. 

"Clark," he says. 

Clark turns around. 

"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"I got in trouble with Superman. He might...I don't know. Come around, I guess. So...uh...if you wanna fire me. That's--relevant information, you should, uh...know that."

Clark's face changes under the gentle glow suffusing the room. 

"I don't think Superman will come after you, Matches."

"Oh. And why's that?"

"I just have a feeling. Goodnight."

Clark walks down the ladder. Bruce looks after him, and switches off the light.

"Goodnight," he says into the dark. 


	5. Chapter 5

The days swim by. Without knowing it, Bruce starts dissolving. He lies in the wheat fields, under the sky-mirror, lifting his heart to it. Healing. That's what Alfred had called it.

_I hope you heal, Master Bruce._

Bruce doesn't know how to do that. He'd said so.

_Don't try, Master Bruce. Just...stop trying._

Clark's gentle smile. Clark's easy face. Clark's small lies. As wholesome and good as his mother's peanut butter.

Bruce can stop trying. He can do that. 

After all, Batman can do anything. 

_Can we find a different way, Master Bruce?_ Alfred asked when Bruce came in dripping with gore one night. 

_None of it is mine,_ Bruce answered. 

He was lying. 

Alfred looked sad. Like he had aged a thousand years.

Bruce couldn't find a different way. This is all he knows. 

It is imperfect. But it is true. True to himself. The tide of Gotham's corruption and dirt can only be stemmed from the inside. From someone who deals in the same metaphors, speaks the same language. 

Law and order has had it's chance. Now it's the turn of vengeance.

Bruce sighs as he lies back. _Vengeance._ It's hard to think of it when in Kansas, surrounded by strong oaks and pine breezes and wallowing in the smell of balmy soil and baked earth. The fact that _Gotham needs him_ begins to reside somewhere deeper and deeper in his memory, burrowing under the plots of Martha's radishes and orange groves.

But _Clark._ Clark is a whole different business.

The conversion of Clark into Superman is in it's earliest stages. Bruce sees the potential. He also sees that he has to wait to make his move, if he wants to enlist this potential ally. Superman is powerful. But his power doesn't lie in his deeds, heroic as they may seem.

His power lies in his _symbol._

The symbol of a man who backs down from nothing. Of strength in righteousness. Of daylight, without cowardice.

Of hope.

In other words, of the exact opposite of Batman.

Bruce stands up and dusts himself of. Clark Kent has come back from school, and is standing there, looking at him, with a smile on his face. 

The smile does something to Bruce's insides. 

"Hey," says Clark.

* * *

"So you'll save on a mechanic if you let me handle the repairs. And I suggest you auction the girdles and saddle. They might fetch something quite decent--I've seen them, they're sturdy. They're old enough to pass as vintage." Bruce says. 

"Oh dear," says Martha. "Have some more mashed potato. You're worth so much more than we--"

"Can you pass the pot roast?" Bruce interrupts her. He knows the direction this is going in, and he doesn't like it one bit. The Kents have a hard time of it already, without Martha giving him a pay raise.

Clark arches an eyebrow at him. 

Bruce shrugs. 

"Oh, Ma," Clark says between mouthfuls. "I have something to tell you." The serious look on his face betrays that this is something meant for the ears of family. 

"Excuse me," says Bruce, pushing the chair back and standing up. The steady click-click-click of the living room fan is audible even in the kitchen, where it doesn't drown out the uncomfortable silence.

"No don't--" Clark says even as Martha says "that's alright honey--"

Martha Kent has recently taken to calling him 'honey'. Bruce isn't sure how he feels about it, but it gives him a distinct sense of security. 

"Sit down," Clark says, a bit more firmly, perhaps, than he intended. Bruce and Martha look at each other. 

Clark's face is creased with something that anybody else would call a frown. Bruce sits down. 

"This is a family matter," Clark says, and then picking up a glass of water, takes a large gulp, as if wetting his throat in anticipation. 

Bruce takes a deep breath. He silently sends up a hope that this is Clark announcing his superhero shenanigans to the 'family'. 

"What is it dear?" asks Martha. She has a worried look on her face. Bruce can see her going through the possibilities, all the worst of them. 

Clark takes a deep breath, as Martha squirms. _Put your mother out of her misery!_ Bruce wants to scream. 

"I've decided not to go to college" Clark says. 

Martha looks by turns puzzled, then blank, then aghast.

"What?"

"I'm not going." Clark repeats, putting each word in stark relief against the other.

Martha lifts her hand to her chest, clutching it as if it is too tight. Bruce gets up quickly. She motions him down. 

"What do you mean, _Clark Kent?_ " She asks, her voice rising into a squeak. And that's when Bruce notices that that is not water Clark is sipping from the tumbler in his hand. It is vodka. The smell emanating from Clark's mouth tells him enough. 

The sonofabitch is piss-drunk. 

Clark looks at Martha for a long time, swaying slightly in his seat. His eyes are now clearly bloodshot. Even Martha notices. But to Bruce's surprise, she reaches forward too. She snatches the tumbler from Clark's hand, and instead of emptying it in the sink, empties it in her mouth. She gulps down, then grimaces. 

"I _said_ , I'm _not_ going to college!" Clark shouts. His mother looks at him with sharp, fierce eyes. 

"And when did you make this decision?"

"On and off, for about six months." 

Martha gets up from her seat and hobbles over to the kitchen island, retching into the sink. 

"And what about--Jesus, what _proof_ is this?" she asks. Bruce gets up and digs around in the bin for a towel, then holds it to her mouth. Her black chiffon blouse sticks damply to the back of her neck. Clark gets up too, and leans over the cabinet. 

"Christ, Ma, why you drink that? Here" he slurs, holding out a bottle of vinegar from the stand. "That should make it alright." Bruce takes it from him slowly and puts it back where it came from. 

"Tell me why, Clark Kent! After everything your father and I did, to get you that college fund. Everything we went through, all the years of scrimp-and-saving, all the flea markets and the Ikea and Target, all the arm-setting, all the--" she leans over and vomits out some more. Her frail chest heaves, her ribs visible in stark plainness against the cloth hugging her fragile body.

Clark looks on with tears in his eyes. 

"I'm sorry, Ma."

"Don't tell me you're sorry!" she screams, letting the faucet water run into her mouth. "Don't! What are you gonna do with your life? Down out here on the farm anyway? Become a yokel like us?"

Bruce realizes who this includes.

"Matches," Martha turns to him, her gray hair fuzzy and snapping. She spreads her hands. "Tell my son why a college education is important."

"But Ma!" Clark protests. 

Bruce Wayne, Yale dropout, suddenly can't remember if Matches Malone is supposed to have a college degree or not. But he resents the implication. 

"Clark," he turns to Clark. He has no choice. "Obey your mother." 

"Thank you," Martha says with her hands on her hips. She turns to her recalcitrant son, who is suddenly looking very betrayedly at Bruce. "There! See? Even Matches agrees. You don't want to end up like _him_ , do you?"

This proves Martha Kent is very drunk indeed. 

"But I like this farm!" Clark wails. "I love it! I wanna give it my life! I don't mind becoming like Matches. A wanderer, Ma. How...Huckleberry Finn." Clark's drawling wail now reaches an epic pitch. "I've always _waaaanted_ to become a Huckleberry Finn. You _knoooow_ that, Ma." 

"Shut up!" says Martha Kent, sitting down heavily leaning on her thighs.. "You're becoming a professor. I've set my heart on it. I can see it just now. Clark Kent, PhD. Professor of something or another. I've always told you you have the right face for glasses." She sniffs, looking into the distance, her eyes watering like they've been bleached.

"Might I...interrupt," says Bruce, all meekness. They both look at him testily.

Clark's face still reflects the betrayal he feels. Martha is all angst. Bruce can see in her eyes all her dreams floating away into a rainbow, from there to taunt her for the rest of her life.

"There _is_ some distance between being a professor and a tramp. A great _deal_ of distance."

Apparently this had not occurred to the Kents. They look at each other.

"Clark could become any number of things," Bruce says. Clark looks befuddled.

"Like what?" he says. "What if I don't _want_ to be anything?"

At this, Martha Kent again goes oh ho ho, holding her chest as if in anticipation of a heart attack. The guilt works. Clark's eyes start watering again.

"Like...I don't know...a travel journalist!" Bruce is grasping at straws in thin air. "I know you love your writing."

Bruce secretly prays no one has to endure Clark's writing, especially not the general public. The man writes like an encyclopedia mixed with an enlistment pamphlet.

Clark settles down, looking sullen. "I'd have to go to college for that."

"And what's so bad about college?" Bruce asks.

Clark looks at his mother. 

She looks back. 

The silent communication is understood. 

"Should I step out for this part?" Bruce asks.

They turn and look at him steadily. Martha's watery blue eyes shine.

"If you tell me your real name," she says, "I'll tell you why I ask."

Bruce has the sense not to look confused. Both Clark and Martha look absolutely sure. They clasp each other's hands across the bone-dry table, raw and warm. Clark smiles a honeyed smile, and laughs a honeyed laugh.

"You honestly didn't think, Matches, or whatever-your-name-is, that we didn't _know._ We knew. We just thought you could use the privacy."

Bruce begins evaluating his escape points. But what use would it be?

Would Clark risk his escaping to protect his own identity? 

Bruce remembers Clark, lying in the morning light, next to him, his needy body a line of pain. Bruce's hand over his chest, in a friendly series of caresses...Clark talking about his father, how much he'd loved him, how he misses him, how everything on the farm reminds him of him...and how messed up it all was. 

How messed up _this_ is. 

Why does the world need secrets? Why does everything have to be lies, deception and pain? Why do feel the need to hide parts of ourselves?

Because we hurt each other.

But would Clark hurt him? 

Would Clark, would Superman, arrest his friend when he found out he was a vigilante wanted in thirty states? 

Probably. 

But then again, there is a chance...

A slight chance...

 _No._ Bruce pushes down the idea firmly. _No. Absolutely not._

Because call it what he may, honesty stops being a good thing and crosses the line into selfishness when it involves something greater than us. When it would hurt others. Alfred. 

Alfred would no doubt be arrested as well. And so would Lucius. 

Bruce can't risk that. He won't. 

And what of his cause? His city? Waiting for him, her arms outspread, her knees weak with giddy fatigue and exhaustion, calling him to her, calling him...her belly of sewer filled to the brim, overflowing with ghastliness and dim destruction...

And who could save her? Who cared? Who wanted? Who needed to...?

Him. 

_Only_ him. 

"Ma'am," Bruce says, looking at Martha, "you've got it. My name isn't Matches. As in, that isn't my christian name." 

"Now don't be daft." Martha Kent says, looking at him and taking out a cigarette from a pocket in her red and white apron. Clark immediately snatches it from her hand and tosses it with a flick of his wrist into the trashcan. 

"We know you're rich," Clark helps. 

"Now, we don't know that--" Martha begins, but Clark stops her in her tracks with his hand. 

"We know enough," he says. 

"Enough?" Bruce quirks his eyebrow. 

"Honey, the next time you wanna be a tramp for the heck of it, make sure you don't have a five-thousand dollar-looking manicure under those chipped fingernails," Martha says, reaching out and turning his hand to inspect his nails. "Those were nice scratch marks though. And I'd wager the calluses are real. Still, rich man hands. My my, what Jonathan would say..."

"Ma'am..."

"Not to mention you turned down extra pay," Clark says, folding his hands across his chest, as if that settled the matter. 

"Cause o y'all not being well off," Bruce says laughing. "And me not wanning to be a burden. Can't a man just be decent nowadays without being rich?" 

He's given up the fight. This is his last-ditch effort. It's obvious that mother and son have ganged up on him, and the one being sharp as a razor and the other not needing to, being super-powered and all, he knows when he is outmaneuvered. 

He also knows that the shit about manicures is bull. Clark must have sensed something. Maybe his heartbeat, or his blood pressure rising, whenever he lied for the sake of his cover. Well, it wasn't as if Clark himself was being completely honest. 

"Come, be honest," Martha begs. "Clark's dying to be too." 

Clark doesn't look like he's dying to be anything. He sits with his back straight, his thick arms crossed, his pectorals visible through his white shirt. His face is a shuttered blank. Bruce studies the table cloth. It has one mustard stain, an odd colored one the shape of a tongue...

"Fine." He holds up his hands. "You got me. I'm Oliver Queen." 

Oliver Queen and Brucie Wayne looked notoriously similar. Notoriously, because they exploited it to full advantage in prep school. That is, before Oliver presumably died in a shipwreck and Bruce became Batman. 

To use his dead friend's name in such a godawful manner should have struck a string in Bruce's conscience. The fact that it did not is a testament to said conscience's awesome resilience. 

Clark looks doubtful. 

" _You're_ Oliver Queen?" 

"Born and raised."

Clark tilts his head slightly. Bruce knows he is checking his pulse. Bruce also knows he won't find anything wrong with it. 

"Bullshit," says Clark, but he's looking remarkably less confident. Martha squirms in her seat. 

"Clark, why does it matter so much who Matches really is? Let him be Bruce Wayne or Lex Luthor for all I care! He's your _friend_. That's all that matters, right? We both know why birth names are not the most important thing in the world." 

"But _Ma_!" Clark wheedles, but he knows he has lost this argument. Bruce slides out of his seat and begins piling the dishes. Clark frowns and follows him with his eyes while Martha goes upstairs complaining of a headache. 

"Take a Vicodin and go to bed!" Bruce calls after her. 

"Yes, _dad,_ " is the answer. 

*******************

As August draws and the wind is grown with sowing, Bruce and Clark work side by side, their shirts off, their backs to the chill, blowing breeze. The earth, fresh and tilled, has an ever-germinating rawness about it, an innocence. The soil turns easily in Clark's hands. He is no longer so careful with his powers around Bruce. a kind of recklessness has come about him. This is the season for beginnings, new and old. Bruce catches Clark looking at him with a kid's interest, at his abs with an eager hunger. He himself finds it easy to grow, his cock urging its way out of his pants. This is the season, after all. 

They instead inhales the air, the musky sweetness of the leaves as they begin to mulch. It makes them both hornier, and, almost paradoxically, shyer. 

Martha comes out with periodic trays of lemonade, sweet and cold, with sprigs of mint at the top. Bruce grunts as he downs his glass in one whole, and then reaches for Clark's. Clark slaps his hand away. 

_This is the life_ , Bruce finds himself thinking, and then pinches himself. For a moment it all seems unreal. No crime, no cases, no forensic evidence, no murder sites. No victims. No law, no blood. No justice.

Only innocence. 

He turns back to the sowing. Planting new life in the ground. The seed kernels, yellow, orange and brown, glow like crumpled butterfly wings, gossamer in the sunshine. He looks up, and listens. The leaves whisper as they blow against each other, like random, wayward harps. He sighs. 

Is it worth it? 

Alfred has called. Falcone is making a move on Gotham. Bruce's undercover sources have discovered, and are reporting. The Batman is rumored to be dead. Gone. Broken. Extinct. Asleep. Camouflaging. 

Now, more than ever, Batman needs an ally. 

He sows. 

Tonight. Tonight he has to tell all, reveal all to Clark. Tonight he has to put his fate in his friend's hands. Tonight will decide his fate. 

But before tonight, he has to find Clark's spaceship. 


	6. Chapter 6

"The heavens and the earth, and all that is in between them--think ye we have created them in jest?" - Koran.

_Clark_

Clark returns from high school at three, loaded with college brochures. His worst fears have come true. He's won a provisional scholarship to Met U (perfect mid-year scores, tons of extracurriculars and one instance of helping an old lady cross the street, witnessed by the student agent). He feels like his limbs have spun out from him in all directions like noodles. His head has started to ache.

Not to mention yesterday he shot something like a real, steaming laser from his right eye; it narrowly missed his mother and drilled a hole in the tractor. Clark doesn't know what to expect next; it feels like being on a rollercoaster, except the rollercoaster is your body, your life. Clark is not exactly comfortable with the level of near-miss it was. The danger he poses to his parents makes him feel like...an alien. On the outside. _Other._

Luckily Matches was outside on the combine. Matches would probably say the tractor died a merciful death, Clark thinks ruefully. But he would never know what happened to her. His mother deserve some good news now. It feels almost too cruel to withhold.

'"Hey," Lana calls across the emerald hedge. She's wearing a denim jacket and faux-leather boots. Her hair flies in the wind like a silk scarf. 

"Hey." Clark replies. 

"You don't look too great." She says, sympathetic. 

"Thanks."

She swings over the fence in one fluid stride and lands like a deer. 

"I'm not going to tell her," Clark says confidentially.

"What, about the scholarship?" 

He nods. He has confided in her the real ambitions of his life. 

She emits a shrill screech. Clark cowers while birds take flight all around them, in a large crow funnel. The sky above reflects the ethereal blue of her summery cotton blouse, Clark notices.

Her nostrils flair. 

"And _why_ the hell not," she demands, standing with her hands on both hips, her tiny olive nose crinkled up. Her voice sounds surprisingly like his mother's. 

"Coz it would make things hard for me," he admits.

Lana looks him up and down. 

"You know something, Clark Kent? There are those of us who would do anything short of killing to get this scholarship. And you just...throw it away. Like it means _nothing._ To _anybody._ Clark Kent. The Superman." She puffs out her chest and beats on it with both fists, in what is possibly meant to represent a gorilla. 

"Hey now," Clark interrupts. "You got that Wisconsin..."

"Wisconsin, Clark! Gotham! Do you know" she shivers. "Gotham has the highest crime rate of any city in the northern hemisphere, and that _includes_ New Mexico! I'm going to end up in a ditch somewhere. I'm just a Kansas girl!" she wails, her face obscured by runnells of tears.

"Hey come on." He pats her on the back. "It can't be worse than New York..."

"It _is_ worse than New York. It's _cursed,_ Clark. I did some research. Every city has its urban legends. Gotham? Its where urban legends go to come _true."_

"Jesus."

"I _know._ "

"No, you _don't._ Not every urban legend is a bad thing, Lana. Have you ever thought of that?" Clark snaps. 

" _No,_ I haven't, because that's stupid." Lana makes a face as if Clark just said Frankenstein's monster may not be a bad thing.

"What about that Super flash guy?"

"He's not a legend, I've _seen_ him." She makes hand binoculars and puts them to her eyes. "He's ripped. _God_ , he's ripped. Like _extra_ ripped." Her lips flush like she's getting wet just thinking about his ripped-ness.

"You haven't seen him," Clark says.

Just then, Matches emerges from under the far hedge. 

"Seen whom?" he asks, all neighbourly gruffness. Lana and Clark start.'

Marches is carrying shears the size of his thigh. His white shirt is ripped, his sleeves folded, he wears black shades. The shirt flatters his pectorals. He looks like one of those cowboys Clark used to have on bedroom posters, stern eyed and lantern jawed, back when he was a tween and also into ABBA and SpongeBob. 

"How long have you been here?" Clark eyes the hedges suspiciously. They look perfectly sheared, but then, they _always_ look that way. Clark has never seen an overgrown hedge in his life. The shears are clean. 

"Am I in trouble, _sir?"_ Matches asks, drawling. Clark swallows. Besides him, he sees Lana staring at Matches, her pink lips parted, her cheek blooming like a rose. 

Matches has no eyes for her.

"No. Just stop eavesdropping," Clark says dismissively. The light goes out of Matches' eyes.

"You were rather _cruel_ to him, Clark," Lana says, following Matches with her eyes as he turns around deflated and goes into the toolshed.

"He's the farm hand." Clark says. He feels committed to playing the part now that he's already struck out. Lana makes a face at him.

"He's asking for trouble, and you're giving it to him. He has you exactly where he wants you."

"What."

She tosses her hair with a laugh and dances over the fence. "Byeee" she sing-songs. "And get to telling her, will you? Or _I_ will!"

"It's provisional!" He calls back. "I could always flunk the SATs!"

Lana's back retreats into the distance. Her homestead is near, and she always enjoys the early afternoon exercise. Clark finds himself reminiscing of freshman year, in the locker room after school. They'd...

"That's stupid," says his mother's voice. Clark turns around.

It's his mother, of course. Matches stands behind her, smirking.

Clark silently implores the Earth to open and swallow him.

"Mama."

Martha Kent looks hot and bothered. Her apron strings are flying in all directions, and are in only slightly better condition than her hair. A fly buzzes and settles on the spatula in her hand. She nods towards the house. 

_Why would Matches tell on me_ , beats inside Clark's head. _Is he trying to be MORE of a slimy rascal than he already is?_

They go inside. 

How much did she hear?

"Mom. That's not..."

"Don't." she says softly. Her voice has gone husky and gray. 

"Okay. Alright." He's going to play nice. He's going to play nice. 

He pulls up a chair and sits down at the kitchen island.

"Did Matches just tell on me?" Clark asks. But the smirk on that leathery, weatherbeaten face was enough.

His mother looks uncomfortable. Clark feels betrayed.

"That canker-blossom'd scobberlotcher! That vile piece of--"

"Enough!" but she's smiling. Clark's colourful insults are a point of pride for her. She points to the oven. The knob is turned to the highest temperature.

"Could you? I can't find my oven mitts."

"Sure." he opens the oven. The smell of roasting peaches wafts into his nostrils, mouth-wateringly toasty. Somehow it makes him think of Matches, and his jacket, his overalls, the smell of his sweat. It makes him put down the pan rather more harshly than he intended.

"All done," he says.

"That's for me to judge," says his mother. She inserts a toothpick into the pie. Clark notices that she hasn't spoken about the scholarship since they came into the house. It feels warm, but also clammy to Clark's oversensitive skin. He feels like fanning himself.

"Why am I always so hot?" he asks his mother. He feels like getting the elephant out, but has no idea how. So he fans himself, deliberately, repeatedly.

And she ignores him, turning her back to cut the pie. 

"Ma..."

"What." She turns, her eyes sorrowful.

Clark has no idea how to tell to look repentant. So he just looks dejected.

"I'm sorry.

"No you're not."

"I--

"Were you really not going to tell me?" 

Clark looks down. 

"Ma...I just..."

"What."

He throws his arms out. "I was lying when I said the farm was my life. I mean...I can't imagine ever living my years out here. But...college just isn't the place for me right now either! I mean, just high school has been torture for me. Fucking torture, Ma. It's...none of it...it's all..." Clark runs his hand through his hair, breathing heavily, his eyes slightly unfocused. "None of it is real! It's all fake. All of it! Just going through corridors, always being...reminded that there is no place for me out there, that even the punks and the gays have somewhere to belong, but there is no alien club! There's no club for the 'Normal People Who Secretly Come From Spaceships'. There's no club for Those Who've Never Been Part of Any Club, Not Really. And I'm sorry, Ma, I just..." Clark Kent gives up and sits down, sinking into the seat with his frame lunging towards the table. "I'm just so tired, Ma. _I'm just so motherfucking tired!_ " 

His breath comes in sharp gusts. He's never sworn in his mother's presence before. Well. There's a first for everything. 

Martha Kent looks unfazed. Her gaze is steel and iron, she's got the chops of the lioness. She stoops over Clark and takes his face between both hands. Then she administers two slaps on either cheek. Her fingers burn, but the look on Clark's face is worth it. 

"I'm sorry, but I wasn't aware there was a _pity party._ Could you keep the noise down?"

Clark looks up into his mother's face. It's completely bereft of sympathy. 

"Fuck you," Martha Kent says slowly. "You know what, Clark?" she says to her shocked son. " _Fuck you_." She spells the words out with her teeth, biting into them. "Yeah, I said that, and you can quote me on it! You think you're the only one? Huh? What about your father, who singlehandedly fought against the entire Mormon tribe responsible for his upbringing? He had _no one_ on his side--"

"Mom, I never said--"

"Shush. Now I'm talking. Listen to me, Clark. You know I care about you. You know I'd lay down my _life_ for you. You know I think you are the best person I know. But if you think I will stand idly by while you become a self-pitying jerk, well I won't! Your powers are of no use to you if you cannot become a hero on the inside! And heroes are about others first! _Others first_ , Clark! _Always_!"

"You think I'm not thinking about others the minute something is about myself?!"

"You're asking for something that is not yours, can never be yours, honey. But there is still a world that needs you. and isn't that better than a world that you fit in, but you can't help? I feel so useless, Clark. I feel so _useless_ sometimes, when I'm trimming the garden or baking potato pie for the bake sale! I wish--I would tear my heart out if it would get me that wish--that I could do more. But I'm just a puny old middle-aged woman, hon, and I do my best with what I've got."

Clark feels his shame claw into him, into his skin, into his chest. But is it right? Is he not allowed to feel anything, be anything, need anything? Ever complain? 

His mother goes on. 

"The day there is really no one worse off than you, Clark, in the world, the day there is no poor rape victim in Thailand abandoned by her family and giving birth in a ditch somewhere, on that day, on _that_ day Clark, I will sit and listen and you can cry me a river." 

Clark gets up. He puts the pie down. Outside, the air has turned frigid. His mother had never spoken to him like this. Not once in all his life. 

But it's just right. It's all just right. He wipes his forehead. His mother had always been there for him, through it all. And maybe he isn't--maybe he doesn't--have the right. The right to _complain._ The most human thing of all.

After all, he has a loving family. He has great friends. He has first world opportunities. He has powers people would kill for. 

Still, the lonesomeness doesn't retreat. It chokes him like a shroud wrapped around his throat. He thinks of the many sunrises and sunsets he will have, after this day. The times he will regret, and remember. The times he will want to forget. 

Is today one of the days he will not want to remember, when he is looking across the prairie, after they are gone? When the sun sets on his mother's grave, is today something he would want to forget?

_No._

Today is something he needs to remember all his life. If he ever wants to become what he wants to be. What he's meant to be. 

Superman. 

He leans down to kiss his mother.

"Thanks, Ma."

* * *

The birds take flight, their great wings wheeling in the heavens . It is that season of eternal wonder, when Clark enjoys sensing the breeze on his skin, on his hair, in his clothes. His enlarged pores wear the scent of honeysuckle and jasmine, tomato and radish, to the fields. Their vast stretching in every direction, shorn like the blue sky above of its wool, reminds him of when he was a little boy and he used to fly airplanes, his arms outstretched, slicing through the wind, tickling the hair on his arms. 

Matches is mostly busy tending to the cow, cleaning the shed, collecting buttercups. Clark once saw him appear above the hill, his tan standing out strikingly against the translucent dawn, his fleecy shirt tight against his biceps. His strong thighs were pacing with restless expectancy, his hands tight in his pockets, clenched painfully, his muscles pulling, straining against the fabric of his skin. His entire body seemed taut like a string, ready to pulse with energy or break out and snap with one pluck. Clark wanted to help him relax. He wants to lay his body open, each delicate string laid out, at Clark's mercy, and he would play all the most beautiful tones in the world, would soothe him with his own sweet melancholy. He would make sweet love, bringing his harmony to its highest pitch; he would conduct his own body opera. All their everything delicate would come together, but they would not clash. They would energetically strum each other's nerves and sinews, but never, never, break each other's strings. He has a feeling Matches would know how. Matches would know where. The fact that they are strangers, they barely know each other, their motives are each searched for like treasures buried somewhere, and yet each is simply content to bask in the other's presence. Like twin moons. 

Clark approaches Matches. Matches sits milking Fred, pulling each of the four udders in turn with an expert suction, between his fingers and thumb, a slight sound like the bursting of a water balloon. The milk flows out in equal streams, two and two, between his fingers; he looks at it equably. Clark kneels down next to Matches. Matches continues to ignore him, not even a grunt in his direction.

The smell of ammonia and salt hits Clark immediately; it's overpowering; like a fount in his nostrils. It rises from Matches' pale lemon shirt. 

"Hey."

Matches grunts. 

"Care to let me help? You've been up since sunrise." 

"It's okay, kid. I've got this."

His powerful arms, their muscles rippling, makes for quite a sight. Clark sits back on his haunches, watches him go through the motions. 

"You've done this before. A lot."

Matches smiles. Or maybe the word _smile_ is not entirely accurate. It's more of a sort of grimace, but it extends his features pleasantly. His teeth look fierce reflecting the ray of gold light coming in from the rafters. 

"Where do you really come from?" Clark asks. 

"Wisconsin," Matches answers, with no more chalance than if he was asked what day it was. _Spunky bastard._

"So...Star City?"

Matches looks at Clark. Some of the old wolfishness flashes in his teeth. "Gotham."

"Gotham!" Clark pretends to be amazed. "Would never have figured you for a Gotham man." 

Matches rolls his eyes. 

"Never figured I could pass for Oliver Queen. Would have tried harder, with the right people." 

Clark laughs. 

"Fine, so you're not Oliver Queen. I never believed you. But you're definitely not who you say you are."

"And who do I say I am?" asks Matches. 

Clark squints at him. "You're not from Gotham."

"Because of the farm work?" Matches looks disinterested. "Had an aunt living out'n the midwest. Taught me a good deal. Baked it in good with a lick or two." All this with the air of a man who brushes aside all questions with an aura of comfort. 

"I'm sorry." Clark looks away. He looks at the cow, who is now drowsily chewing on hay, her pink gums visible through the gap. 

"It's fine." 

Clark kneels.

"So...Gotham. Those rumors of a bat devil in town. True, any of 'em? I've got Lana going to go down there in the summer. Y'know, college application. I mean, I could tell her to cancel it, even now..."

"An she'd listen to you? What is she, like your girlfriend?" 

Clark blushes. "No...not--it's not like that. It's different, y'know."

"So you care about her."

Clark observes how intelligently Matches has changed the topic without even acknowledging its existence. 

"So, back to the bat monster. There anything you can tell me about it?" Clark asks. 

"Why do you wanna know?"

"Just...you know. Feed my curiosity. C'mon. Indulge me."

Matches shrugs. "Guy's bad news. Friends of mine, ended up on the wrong side of his fists. Made a run for it, I did. Don't wanna end up like non' of those poor bastards. He's real, alright. He's a goddamn psychopath."

"But I heard that he only goes after, like, criminals and stuff."

Matches gives a snort. " _His_ version of criminal, sure. Not all of us make our livin' off the streets on the wrong side o' the law, if you know what I mean."

"So...you're saying..."

"Look kid. I'm telling you this 'cause I don't give a damn whether you throw me out or finish my contract, or whate'er. Hell, I don't even have any contract, so sue me. Yeah, I used to be a top-notch bookie. Mid-level, if y'know what I mean. No jurisdiction here can catch me, statute of limitations over. But he, the bat...the bat never forgets." Matches taps the side of his nose. "He comes for you, they say, when you most expect it. because you're gonna be expecting him everyday of your life. Like a fever you're gonna die of. I've seen guys quaking in their boots, crying for their mommas, falling on the ground and rolling around like madmen, 'cause they thought he was onto them."

"Jeez. But only, like, shady characters such as yourselves, amirite?"

"If you mean your precious Lana, all I know is the Bat doesn't go after women. And why would he pick off any random girl like that?"

Clark leans closer. One confidence deserves another. "Lana isn't just any random girl, is why. I suspect she has an appetite for...well. Shoplifting."

"You suspect?"

"No, I'm sure."

"Okay, so first of all, the bat isn't a bogeyman. 'kay? He doesn't go after any shoplifters, for godsakes. He's trying to undo crime, or some such thing. Eradicate it from the city."

Clark narrows his eyes. "How the hell do you know so much about him?"

"Like I said, he isn't any bogeyman. He has an agenda, loud and clear. It just isn't about saving people."

"You enjoy talking about him, don't you? It's like you take some vicarious pride in his accomplishments." 

Matches looks at him sideways. For the first time, Clark weighs in the possibility that he may have been wrong, that Matches isn't a WASP who likes masquerading as a tramp for funsies. That he's something sharper, more dangerous. _Something feral in his eyes_ , his mother had told him on that first day. _Be careful_. And just like any criminal, Matches enjoys talking about his crimes.

"They say," Matches says, his voice into a rough growl, like he has pebbles grinding in his throat. "They say the bat is always closer than you think."

The voice sends shivers down Clark's spine. 

"Hey. Stop doing that," Clark laughs, and tries to shrug...whatever it was away. 

"Doing what?"

"That. That voice. Where'd you learn it?"

"In Tibet," says Matches seriously.

"Really? You've been?" Clark asks, with more than human credulity. 

"Yeah. Been lots of places. Some good, some bad, a few pretty darn divine." He stretches his back and limbs, wringing them out. Then he stands up, and offers a hand to Clark. 

"Let me tell you," he says. 

And so they sit and talk. Clark can listen to Matches talk for eons. His voice, sonorous and deep, rises and falls like a ship on deep, dark waves, rocking Clark to and fro along the tide of his experiences. Clark knows better than to suspend his disbelief, but he does so anyway, and accepts them whole, all the words, the stories. How Matches had visited the magical plains of Nanda Parbat, where the sacred waters never stopped flowing; and the monks fasted for ten thousand years, never moving for the entire time, as still as the carved stone gates; how the gates of the Himalayas had opened to him, cold and unforgiving to many, the sky as blue as a bird's wing, the earth fresh with a ripe snow-flushed summer, the creeks running with the Ice Goddess' tears. The guy has a wonderful imagination. Clark drinks in his words hungrily, eagerly, his stomach churning, his eyes burning, his face coming nearer and nearer to absorb Matches' voice...until he can smell the man's scent. It smells like briars and root. Clark's brain reels. 

He pulls himself away with some force. After all, Matches does not need his employer's son hitting on him with all his strength, and all his recklessness, when he may actually be who he says he is, someone just trying to do the honest thing and put his life back together...Besides, what would he say to that? Would he make a face and pull away? Would he let Clark go ahead and make a fool of himself? Clark, who's only kissing experience has been three years ago, in a locker room. Who hasn't lip-locked with anyone after that time, not anyone, because he was too lonely, too exposed, too vulnerable. And here comes Matches, and Clark feels like he could tell him anything, anything at all, and the guy would listen, and would stop asking questions. They could tell each other. Couldn't they? 

"I'm an alien," Clark says in a hurry. "I'm an alien, I came from a different planet. I came in a spaceship. My parents found me, here. Out here. All alone. They found me, and they took me in, and they brought me up, and--well. Here I am."

Already the horrific dawning realization of what he just told him, this man who he doesn't know who he is, Matches-OliverQueen-Bat, who? and what he has spilled, which he can never take back, and wasn't he just a genius, and now Matches would laugh at him, or worse, take him seriously, and he doesn't know if he is more afraid of being believed or not.

But Matches looks at him like his forehead has just tuned to jelly. "How do you know, kid?" he asks. "How do you know you descended from the stars? Parents tell their kids stories all the time. All the fucking time. Trust me. And kids are apt to believe them. Now don't get me wrong--I think it's wonderful, and not at all unbelievable. But such a story--well, you could see why a parent might want their child to believe it. Especially...these hippy parents of yours..."

_Donotdoitdonotdoitdonotfuckingdoit._

"I know." Clark says simply. "I don't need any proof."

"Do you have any powers?" Matches leers at him. 

"No!" 

"See now that means yes."

"How? _How_ does that mean yes?!"

"I've seen aliens," Matches says seriously. "I've seen aliens, and as God's my witness, I don't doubt you. When the time's right, if it's ever right, you'll show me. If it's written. In the stars."

This conversation is getting way too unreal for Clark. For a guy to receive such knowledge as coolly, as groundedly as Matches, is nothing like he's ever experienced. Funny, how it makes him feel like an overexposed cartoon, or a buffet. Like Matches could just come, eat and withdraw, whenever he wanted, and Clark would be open 24 hours for him. 

He wants to hide, but he also wants to emerge from under the bush. He wants to show, he wants to reveal, he wants to throw off all suspense, all pretense...

"Can I ask you something?" Clark asks. 

"Yes," Matches says. His face has turned serious and grave, his eyes open like floodgates. "Yes you can."

"What if I were to prove to you that I was an alien? Would you prove to me that you are the bat?"

Matches' face takes on an image of penitent good humor. "I was just playing around with you kid."

Clark's hope closes. His face dissolves into nothingness, into pettiness. 

"I thought we were having a moment here."

"Listen to me." Matches says. "If I were the bat, you wouldn't want to know. And you wouldn't want to show me anything, kid. It wouldn't be good for you."

"So you are."

"Maybe."

"See now that's what the bat would say."

Matches' face looks tired, like it has been drained of Botox. "Let's let go of the truth, kid."

"Fine." Clark hovers around closing his wrists. His face wants to shrivel up.

"Naw naw, don't do that," Matches puts his hands on Clark's temple and jaw, forcing them apart. "There. All young and innocent again." 

"All prey again."

"Yes. Prey," Matches swallows the word. "Prey. That's a good word. A good, solid, heavy word."

"Am I prey?"

Matches looks at him. 

"No, Clark _I_ am prey. People are prey. You are not...people. At least, not that sort of people."

"Do you think," Clark says, "Do you think, one day, we will meet again? I get the strongest, strangest feeling at times, like we're meant to be, but somehow, and I don't know how..." 

Again, he's said too much. Fuck Matches, and his 'prey' speech. It was just meant to make Clark feel safe. 

"Everything will fall into place." Matches says, with distinct clarity. His breath reassures Clark, draws a trembling line of guilt from him and away. Clark feels lighter. _Everything will work out okay._

It was just what he needed to hear all along. 

He's tired of thinking. He's tired of needing to belong. He wants to feel like he belongs already. 

"Take me with you," he tells Matches. "Take me with you to the ends of the Earth."

"Clark, you don't want that." Matches' face looks wise, and also sorrowful. "Your destiny..."

"Fuck my destiny. I belong with you. Don't you feel it?" Again, the same kickback-feeling, overcoming him, threatening him, coming at him from afar--

"Yes. I do." Matches says simply. "God I do." 

"Then let's make love, tonight. Let's consummate our relationship. Then tomorrow...when the light's still out. We leave. We turn our backs. You on the monster that's hunting-chasing you, I on my dreams, on my destiny."

Matches looks disappointed. Like he'd expected better from Clark. 

"Do you want to leave it behind? Your parents, family, all of it? For reasons unknown? What will you tell yourself, five years later, when you wake up in a shitty motel room with me, and you look at me and I stink, and tears come into your eyes when you think of what might have been could've been never was? Your destiny, Clark, and my curse--we can't run away from it. They follow us, they haunt us in our beds, they finish us to the grave. I have seen it. There is no running away."

"I know. That's why I want to give it a try. And five years from now, we'd have collected enough experiences to last us a lifetime. God! Can you imagine? The universe is so big!" 

"It gets smaller when you see the trees. The plants. The grass. The shrubs. The roots. The people. The crime. The suffering. The pain."

"And I would look. And I would see. And I would still wonder."

"You wouldn't. You would _know_ , and the light would go out of your eyes." 

"And what would I know, _Bruce?_ " 

"That crime and suffering and pain don't go away and the least we can do--" Matches stops. 

"You responded to Bruce." Clark says. 

Bruce blinks. His face is responsive, waiting. 

"I'm Kal," says Clark simply. "I'm Kal-El."


	7. Chapter 7

"There's no need to go anywhere fast," says Bruce, reclining.

"You know, you're older. You should be the more impatient one. Unless you don't need me as much as I need you." Clark speaks with some disdain, to hide his alarming lack of beating around the bush.

"You _think_ you need me right _now_ , Kal Kent. Soon you'll grow tired of me, and bored, when it's your turn to wash the dishes..." 

"So much for not going fast," says Clark. 

Jesus. No wonder the guy had no relationships. If he thought this far ahead in everything...something about it is an attractive quality to Clark. Maybe most other people would be freaked out. But he's not most other people. He's spent his life wishing he were, and now? Now he doesn't. And it isn't even entirely Bruce.

Okay, so maybe it is.

"I'm a virgin." confides Clark. 

"So am I."

"What."

"Yes," Bruce admits with no shame. "I never found anyone worth it." 

"Worth the trouble?"

"Worth the remorse."

"Remorse? You don't think one bit of happiness, do you?" It's almost evening, Clark realizes, with sudden clarity. Time has stretched itself out, filled itself up, gorged on itself. Soon Ma would be calling them for biscuits and tea. 

"Happiness? I've felt plenty of happiness watching leaves fall on a pool before dawn, when the sun casts a rather earthly shadow, like a full moon...But sex? It's dirty, and cheap, and exchanged like currency."

"It brings joy. It _can_ bring joy," Clark argues restlessly. 

"Yes. But as often as not, it indulges in sorrow. For every surplus, the universe exacts a price."

Clark remembers the groping fumbles of Lana, her reaching for his cock. His turning away. Her reaching for his zipper. His giving her hands something else to occupy herself with. _Touch yourself. I like seeing you touch yourself._

He did not like seeing her touch herself. 

But he would like seeing Bruce. He's _positive_ of that.

How would he know for sure? Ever?

"Why'd you leave home Bruce?"

"That's a story for another day." Bruce stands up. No more Matches. Clark is relieved. 

"Do you have a problem that I'm rich?" Bruce asks, packing the rope into the ceiling hatch. 

"No." Clark pushes back his stool and stands up. 

"I have no problem with you being an alien." Bruce says. 

"That is the kindest thing anybody has ever said to me," Clark says sincerely. 

"I know," says Bruce.

"So you're really the Bat?" Clark asks after a while. 

Bruce looks at Clark.

"You really Superman?"

Clark closes his mouth.

"No," he answers after a while. "No I'm not."

Bruce looks at him with a sudden eagerness.

"Why. Why do you say that. When you know...that I could shoot you right now, and know. For certain."

Clark looks away. 

"Will you? Are you so sure?"

"Yes," is the answer. "Yes."

"So will you?"

Bruce looks at him askance. "You know all my secrets."

"No. You are one big secret, Bruce Wayne. I don't think I know you any better today than when you first set foot on our lawn."

"Is that what you really think?"

Clark feels suddenly defensive. "Yes."

"Then fuck you." Bruce gets up and walks away. 

"I'm sorry," Clark calls out after him. 

Bruce decides to stay on in Smallville. After all, Clark needs the...moral support. His SATs are coming up. Alfred keeps him updated on the Gotham situation. If things get urgent, thinks Bruce, he could always say _fuck it_ and...

And what?

Contingency Plan D. 

God he hates Plan D. 

For the next few days, Clark preps for SATs. Bruce does a lot of household chores. They keep running into each other. It's weird. 

Well, mostly. It's also cozy, and kind of warm. Martha starts implicitly trusting Bruce more, now that she senses the tie that's sprouted up between him and her son in one afternoon of ill-counseled jabbering on the part of the two, when the sea of the blood of their hearts met.

One night, when Bruce is out in the barn, Clark is, impossibly, in his bedroom, separated from Bruce by two walls. He looks out the window. He imagines Bruce shining a torch light in Morse code, like they are in an Enid Blyton novel. The sky rolls back its wings, and Clark can see a strong, clear moon. He imagines Bruce, who is sleeping in Clark's fortress right now, get up and look at the moon with him. He wants him to. So bad.

So he does the only thing possible. Bringing out his inner owl, he rolls down the window and hoots. 

Three notes. Three piercing notes of sheer brilliance. 

Or so he thinks. 

Bruce appears a moment later, leaning out of the wooden window in the attic ceiling in sheer panic. Only later does Clark realize his hoots resembled their fire alarm.

Clark leans out of his window, waving like a lunatic. _It was me_ , he mouths.

Bruce is so not having it. He shuts his window in one swift motion, his face wearing the exasperated badge of the Adult.

And thus Clark, feeling like a moron, and also very not-nice, tosses and turns the rest of his night away.

The clock ticks. The tap drips. Time time time. 

Time goes to the regret bin. 

Clark spends his days with Bruce, whatever he can spare. Now with the SATs coming up, casting a shadow on his fate, on his future, even on his pure, wholesome doubts. The ride has come to a striking end--there isn't any do-over. Just returning from the sweaty day into Bruce's cold lap is refreshing, but how long would refreshing last? How long would Bruce last? The man has made it clear he sees it as his mission in life to help people. And Clark? Clark feels like he's growing into his wings. 

Bruce announces his attention to 'move on', much to Martha's very insistent pleas that he 'reconsider'. Clark feels the Earth shaking from under him. His own chest rolls like an unstable thing.

His father had once told him a story about how an archangel comes and sleeps in everybody's heart every night. But when it finds someone's heart grow smaller, there's a problem, because there's lesser space for it to grow. So it tries to burrow, deeper, trying to find some place to sleep. Sometimes people welcome it in. And then the magic happens. _They_ grow. 

"And what happens when they don't let it in?" Clark asks his father. 

"The heart bursts."

But Clark's archangel is leaving. 

"Best of luck," Bruce tells Clark, as they walk towards Martha's gilt-flowering sunflower bed with a weeding kit. The air is bracing, laden with pollen.

"Ace and I'll get you a Gotham U scholarship in place of the Met U one. Flunk and you're on your own."

"Here's my counter-offer." Clark says, flushing. "I flunk, you stay."

"Gotham needs me," says Bruce, in that self-important way he has of making everything seem important except Clark.

"Sure. I don't mean to say you should put a stop on your life for me. I mean, you go on ahead. Why should I stop you? It was just a spring fling, right? Without the fling part? Because please, please tell me all along we've not just been playing with words, Bruce. Please tell me..."

"Okay. Let me just interrupt your prima donna spiel for some infomercials. _You're_ the one not willing to move for _me. You're_ asking me to stay on, as a _tramp..._ for how long was it, exactly?"

"Forever," says Clark. "Forever."

Bruce breathes in, but can conjure up no answer.

So he leans forward and kisses Clark.

Warm lips wash over Clark--warm, warm, Bruce--smelling of Bruce, tasting of Bruce--all whiskey, all breath, all heaven, but somehow surprisingly earthy, filled of sun and liquid light, dry, chapped lips capturing him as their own, owning him, claiming him--and Clark pushes back, with his mouth, strong and filthy, making up for his lack of practice with zest. His heart is beating in his ears, his blood rushing out of his brain and into his lips. All of him, all of Bruce.

" _Ummmph,_ " he moans, grabbing Bruce's shirt. But Bruce has anticipated him, and is grabbing his hands, clamping them between his own behind Clark, biting into Clark's (mercifully soft) lips. Clark loses balance and topples them into the flower bed, and Bruce topples over him, entirely unnecessarily, and continues kissing--Clark cannot believe this is happening. He wants to slap himself, pinch himself, but just then Bruce bites into the tenderest part of his red lower lip, and he forgets why they're even there, his name, and the purpose of life in the sheer _sensation._ The buttery, nutty aroma of the sunflowers coupled with Bruce's distinctive _leather_ smell, and the feel of Bruce's legs and chest and head over him, sends Clark dizzy over the edge.

"Wait, stop. I need to--"

Bruce lifts his head, leaning on Clark's arm. His face is flushed.

"Are you okay?" his voice is near, his breath gusts over Clark's face. 

Clark is most decidedly not okay. His biomechanism gets overloaded very quickly. The prickliness of Bruce's stubble, coarse hands all over him, the sheer _sheerness_ of it.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Clark mutters softly.

"You are not," Bruce feels his forehead. It's burning hot.

"Did I just give you a fever?" Bruce asks with some concern. He shifts his body away from Clark--Clark doesn't like it one bit. He tries to get under the Bruce blanket again, but Bruce stands up, hitching up his trousers with his hands on his waist, looking worriedly at the garden crop. Clark knows the extent of the damage. He also knows who is going to take responsibility for it.

Himself. 

His head feels like another planet, swimming away. His knees feel jittery. 

"Did I make you sick?" Bruce asks, bending down and wrapping Clark up in his arms. Clark leans his cheek against Bruce's muscle-dense solidity, the vast breadth of his chest. His hair brushes against Bruce's collarbone, and the hollow of his throat. 

"If you mean by kissing me, then no. It's my own anxiety that's doing this." Clark says, his voice slightly muffled. 

_"Christ."_ Bruce's voice is all worry, with an undercurrent of...guilt? He looks at the gravel. The birds chirp in the distance. 

"Yes."

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have. It was inappropriate."

"Aw crud. You're not going there. You're _not_ going there." Clark stands up, his heart beating. He look at the sunflowers. There is a clear outline where they have been crushed. Mama's going to be so angry passes through his head. But he's going to stand up to her for this. 

Because it was worth it. The whole experience. Clark shifts his back into Bruce and lets the older man cradle him, his head, his shoulders. Apparently Bruce loves cuddling. Clark wonders how they would look...two (almost) grown men standing ankle deep in magnolias and sunflowers, encircled by the low stone wall, standing with their back to each other in the whip-sharp early morning air...

"Why did you even come here?" Clark wonders aloud. "When you had your city, and your people, and your cause..."

Bruce doesn't answer. 

"Bruce?"

"It's complicated, Clark. Okay?" he snaps out of the daze they're in, his head spinning around to face Clark. His eyebrows are rushed together. "I think it's obvious there are secrets neither one of us is willing to spill. So unless you're willing to bare me yours, show me you trust me, I _can't_ take the first step, Clark. That's just not in me."

"Why do you want something you are not willing to give?" Clark asks. "How is it you demand from everyone that they act as you would never dream to, not in your wildest fantasies..."

Bruce grabs Clark's neck and pushes his face into Clark's. He inhales. Clark smells like... _Clark_. There's no word for it. 

"Please. Just...take the first step. For me."

Clark looks into his eyes. All blue, like turquoise water. Shining. The two of them, looking into each other's eyes like jeweled pebbles reflecting off of each other in the dark.

"Be, Clark, what I could never be. It's what I need you to be."

Clark opens his mouth. Then he closes it. Then he opens it again. 

Only air comes out. 

"What do you want me to do?" he sputters. "F-fly?"

Bruce shakes his head. "I wouldn't ask that of you."

"So you want positive proof?"

"No. I want...a promise."

"Fine. I promise."

"To show me what's in the barn?"

Clark starts back and swallows. 

"What? Where?"

"Clark. No barn is ever that warm in fall or cool in spring. So I want you to tell me what it really is."

"It's...it's heated."

"No. I checked."

Clark looks around halfheartedly, as if for means of escape. 

"Clark." Bruce looks at him intently. "Is that your spaceship?"

Clark stands up. 

"You think you're so clever, don't you? You think people's secrets are _toys._ Yeah, I know why you came here. You came here because you thought I was waiting to be rescued, like some damsel in distress, to be _shown the light_ , cause I had no idea what I was doing, but maybe under _your_ guidance..." Clark sputters..."I'm your toy. Your little experiment. You've been playing with my head, haven't you? Just...pretending to care, pretending to listen...and the minute I found you out you--you actually _kissed_ me....You _kissed_ me. God, I'm a sucker. God. I fell for it. I actually thought you _meant_ something. But you've been wrapping me around your little finger all along. Haven't you? _Haven't you?"_ Clark shouts.

Bruce looks on without moving.

"And what was the big plan here, huh? To capture me? To kidnap me? To make me fall in love with you, which would be the same thing, because _God,_ I'd have followed you to the ends of the Earth...and then you would take me back to Gotham...back to that nasty shitty hidey hole you call a city where hope goes to _die..._ and--And you would have... _brainwashed_ me--I dunno _what_ you lawless bone-breaking urban vigilantes _do_ , but if I'd trust you, my god--" Clark puts his head in his hands _"God--_ you would have turned me into a _monster!"_

He comes to a stop. He's breathing heavily. This is the end, he realizes. This is actually the end. 

A small part of him is drifting away right now, down down down. He can't feel anything, he's numb. 

Bruce gets up. There's something tired in his face. 

"I'll pack. Tomorrow, I'll be gone."

And that small part of Clark, drifting down down, dies. 


	8. Chapter 8

Alfred Pennyworth has had a long life.

As far back as he can remember, it's been full of suffering. 

Well, except this once. When he brought a baby home from the hospital, holding its chubby fingers in his long, papery ones. The baby cooed, like a little chick, and Alfred Pennyworth, long suffering butler, finally had his reward as he looked into its eyes. 

The baby's eyes were the color of the sea under a heavy raincloud. Its skin was like the summer sunset, its mouth was a raisin. As the baby grew, Alfred Pennyworth grew more and more attached to the thing. The squalling, sordid little thing which produced a disproportionate amount of diapers for its size and refused all its food.

"You must eat what is good for you, Master Bruce," the long-suffering Alfred admonished. The baby simply swiped at the tray filled with baby pap, sploshing the food around the kitchen liberally, and cackled as Alfred bent down to pick the tray up.

Poor Alfred Pennyworth. He felt sorry for himself. He acutely felt his position. The baby was a tyrannical monster, grinding him under its chubby little heel. 

He hoped it would grow to become something more reasonable.

* * *

When Master Bruce was sixteen, he took off for Tibet. Overnight. 

Alfred Pennyworth got up to an empty house. 

He went about his dusting. His gardening. His pickling.

He looked at the time. Master Bruce was late. Where was he? 

He went to bed that night knowing his son was somewhere, eking out a life for himself. Missing.

He got up the next day. He went about the dusting. The laundry. The hedges.

Still no Master Bruce. 

He looked at the time. Where was he? 

He went to bed. 

He got up.

He cooked. Washed. Let out the cat.

Looked at the time. 

Slept. 

Got up. Chores. Time. Sleep.

Years.

He could have packed up. Could have left. Could have boarded up the house. 

He did, almost. 

But he waited.

Master Bruce would come back.

And when he did, he would find Alfred. 

Master Bruce, as it turns out, came back. Well, almost all of him.

He had half a liver missing. 

"Left it in the sacred valley of Nanda Parbat," was the answer. 

Alfred almost swallowed his mustache. 

Alfred Pennyworth climbs down the clock from the drawing room, and finds a very...disturbed looking Bruce sitting in the Cave.

"Ah," he says, without turning a feather. "You've returned."

A grunt.

"Well then, shall we say the mission was a success?" Alfred asks.

Bruce looks up at him. He is wearing the suit. His eyes are shallow pits, his face is a haggard ledge of rock. He looks like he hasn't slept in three nights. Alfred swallows, and mentally prepares a list of things he needs to urge--no, _get_ \--Master Bruce to do. Shower, dinner, sleep. He might even have to confiscate the cape and cowl. He considers that option, then dismisses it. It will be the final resort. 

Then his mind stutters, and comes to a stop. Because. 

There are tears in his boy's eyes. 

Alfred stands, as he ever was, still. The gargoyles of Gotham have nothing on him. With all his body, he wants to throw himself forward, wants to hug the boy, wants to comfort him the way _normal_ people are comforted when they cry. Instead, he stands still, his eyes broadcasting all the solidarity Batman will ever need. 

"I see, sir."

Bruce looks back at the monitor, the blue light washing over him. "It was nothing," he grunts. His voice is hoarse, worn down. "Just eight weeks lost."

"I see."

Alfred retreats. Bruce sits back in his chair, apparently scanning the monitors. But someone close to him would see the glaze of his eyes. 

Eight weeks. Just a number. _Eight weeks._

Clark Kent. Eight weeks. 

Eight weeks. Lost.

Clark Kent.

Lost.


	9. Chapter 9

It is two. At night. Holly Robinson walks along the shadows spilling like coal across the cobblestone. The street is littered with Marlboro stumps and greasy newspapers. She's wearing four-inch stilettos, which make a clicking sound as she walks with the trained step of a professional, the rhythm rocking her hips. Click click click. Her hair is tied back in a chignon, her tiny backless dress is a sensuous plum red.

She is sex on a fucking stick.

The narrow street she's walking down is one Crime Alley.

She should know better. After all, she grew up on Gotham's streets, the other side of the railway track. She's an East End girl. 

But maybe she's drunk. Maybe she's tempting fate. Maybe she's looking for the high that comes from surviving a dangerous experience and coming out the other side whole. 

Maybe she wants it to happen. 

Maybe. 

Lucky for her, today's not her day. 

The man who jumps out of the shadows must be approaching fifty. His lower jaw is grizzled, he dribbles spit. His nose is bent like a giant beak. His eyes are beady, a parrot's. 

All of this Holly registers in the split second before he is on her. His arms holding hers down, his mouth breathing down on her, his breath foul and stale like a rotting sea turtle. He starts flattening her against the wall, inexorable like a giant cupboard, wet grimy eels running over her whole body. She screams. 

The shadows come alive. Like liquid velvet, they _move._ Holly breathes in sharply, then moves her eyes to the pasty cardboard face in front of her so as not to tip the thug off. A shifting in the background catches her eye as she struggles, twisting her arms and legs. The reek of stale whiskey and stagnant ash. She gets some purchase and reaches down, takes off her stiletto, chops down on his head with the extra reinforced metal heel. A gash starts up on his forehead, a tear of rich scarlet. Cussing. Gaunt, bony hands, reaching into rattan overcoat, take out a shiny metal thing. A small revolver. Fits in the palm like a stopwatch, perfect and sleek.

The man cocks it. 

"Goodbye pretty." He sounds like an old, tattered hyena. "You'll still be warm after you're dead."

Then it happens. The shadows reach out, like claws, like grimy filthy monster clutch spreading its fingernails.

Holly Robinson watches it long after it's over. Again and again. 

A hand from the shadows. Human. Five fingers. Black leather. Gauntleted. It taps the man's shoulder. 

The man freezes. His breath goes cold on her face.

Then he turns around, as sudden as a flick of wristwatch.

"Remember me?" says the disembodied hand-voice, gravel over wet veins.

The rasp breaks upon Holly's dam of long-ago longings, princes in aching fantasies. Before life spoiled the dream. 

The man freezes, his arm bent, the gun in his hand. Stoneified. _He could just shoot,_ Holly thinks. A drip drip drip. She looks down. A wet line snakes it's way through the man's pants, dripping onto the tufts of hair-grass timid in the moonlight. 

"B-b-but it _can't_ be," a stutter. "No-no they said...they _all_ said you...you we-were de-dead."

Hands shaking. Gun dropping like a coin into the bottom of an old well. Pants wet, eyes staring unblinking, flat blank discs. 

Holly bends down and picks up the gun from where the man has dropped it from between the gap in his legs. She tucks it into her panties, under her dress. _Could be useful_. 

"Go," the voice growls, coming closer towards her. All she's got between is the stinking piece of Gotham trash, between her and the legendary Bat. She can see heavy, humorless tread boots, the tip of the black shoes bright with polish. "Leave us."

"I want to watch," she says, holding up her chin. She walks into the streetlight, her hand on her hip. From here all she sees is a tall shadow, bare outlines with nothing in them. The night incarnate. She hears the whisper of a cape. 

"It won't be pretty," says the voice.

Holly Robinson laughs. A shrill, cacophonous laugh, tearing apart the shreds of the still air. 

" _Please_ don't make it pretty." Her voice has a hysterical edge to it. The shadow moves. 

The man is still paralysed. His legs are beginning to bow under his weight. "Sorry mister. Drunk too much, have a missus, have kids." He cowers like a yearling taken to the slaughter. His shoulders tremble, an old walking frame.

The hand, heavy in the still air, strikes.

Holly's eyes widen.

She's never seen one move like that. A snake's hood, striking and retreating. The man crumbles without a sound.

The Bat steps forward. Ink black hand clenches tight in screeching rat hair, pulls up the head from the ground, bat-shadow looming over, growing and growing. Blood flows out of the mouth in spasms, thick red clots. In place of a nose there is a skull's fleshless nasal hollow.

Goddamn. She's seen broken noses all her life. There's breaking and then there's...

Carnage. 

Shreds of ligaments like tattered feathers hanging from where a nose used to be, blotched with fleshy dark blood. Bits of bone adhere to the face, chalk floating in ketchup. Chin dribbling with spittle.

Then the screaming starts.

The screams pierce the night, spike through Holly's eardrums. 

The Bat turns to her. 

Its chin is granite muscle. Its eyes burn like dying embers, deep-set. Holly feels a shiver go through her veins.

"Give me the gun," it growls.

"No," says Holly. She hugs herself tight, to protect herself from that stare.

The man creature cocks its head. Two bat-ears against the stars. The it shoots out a length of thick, bunched cable filament. 

And rises, throwing out its cloak to form a shadow. Holly stands under the shadow, feeling it wear and touch her skin. The jutting out wings forming a familiar symbol.

And then it is gone, flitting into the night. 

Holly stays. The man is still screaming.

She stays because she wants to remember. All of it.

Bruce collapses into bed. It's been an exhausting night. Three criminals in the act, one small-time cabal. Not bad. 

Still, the weariness is not one of physical, so much as mental exhaustion.

Kent farm drifts back like a slow river with nostalgic longing. The fields, the sun, the spruce, the pine, the cow. Martha's cabbages. Her sun tea.

Clark's laugh.

He considers writing Clark an expository letter, then brushes it away from his mind. What would he write anyway? 

_Hiya Clark, it's your buddy Bruce. You know, the Bat. Bruce the Bat. Now doesn't that have a nice ring?_

_I wanted to apologize. For...you know. Hitting on your almost underage self. Forgive me, for your jawline is to blame. And your eyes. And your lips. And your voice. And your stupid, stupid dreams. And your stupid hopes, your stupid heroism, your stupid fucking smile._

_Yours, in every way that matters._

_Bruce._

_P. S. You were right on the spot with your assessment of my fitness to be your partner. My control issues would probably either end in mutually assured destruction, or I would outwit you and you would end up in abject servitude to me, brainwashed into serving as my sidekick, preferably while wearing a ridiculous costume. So congratulate yourself, you've just dodged a bullet. A literal bullet. A green radioactive one, actually._

_P. P. S. Give my love to Martha._

Damn it. Damn it all to hell. He tosses his sheets, sticky from his sweat, over his body and climbs out of the deep, four-postered bed. His parents' bed. Something squeaks outside the great windows, like a rusty hinge being blown to and fro by the wind. Far away in the gentle ripples of dawn, he hears an owl hoot. 

Hooting. Clark hooting. Like a little child. Three notes. 

Bruce. Come. Here.

He bangs his head against the white pane of the footboard. It helps with the ringing inside his ears. His jaw feels clenched too tight, his tongue is dry. He opens his mouth, but its only to groan. Its a soft groan, a little mouse-groan. A little injured mouse.

_Bats are only mice with wings._

He pads over to the chimneypiece. His grandfather had built this chimneypiece, sturdy as oak, with a mahogany finish. Rough, more at place in a hunter's cabin. The fire roars beneath it, throwing out its aura like sparks from its crackling grate, the wooden logs piled in a flaming, splintering Aztec pyramid. Alfred. Bruce leans down, and lets the fire's warmth envelop him like a snug bedsheet, its mellow flame closing in around him, balming him to his bones. Tries to drive away memories. Cool summer-spring hands. Warm brandy mouth, rough tongue. Salty lips, the taste on his tongue. 

He puts his finger out, just one finger. Tries to touch the fire. Inches away from the flame, his nail flickering in the aubergine glow, the merry, twisting waves of light and heat. 

_The best distraction for pain is pain._

The fire touches his flesh. He grits his teeth. He is no stranger to this pain.

He's walked on hot coals in the Himalayas. He's charred his soft arm flesh on burning fallow. He's fucking Batman. 

Batman should be no stranger to _any_ pain. Batman fucking overcomes. 

Then why is it that even when he withdraws his finger, the angry red welts forming on its tip, his heart doesn't stop clawing at him? Why is it that even through this mind-flaying pain, this branding iron crawling under his skin, can't he stop thinking about a gentle moonlit face, strong cheekbones?

What has _happened_ to him? Dear god, has he--but no, it can't be. It musn't. Batman is destined to be alone. Batman _has_ to be alone.

He looks up, above the fire, dim stinging tears running down his cheeks. At the portrait of his parents. Stiff and aloof, their eyes look down with the stiff-upper lipped propriety of old pictures. Of old-fashioned people. But Thomas's arm is around Martha's waist. His father, the arch-deacon of stoicism. And just where his fingers meet her dress, there is a crinkle. A crinkle in her red velvet dress. 

Like he's holding her to himself, tight. The pasteboard smiles hide something real. Love. 

Love above a mantelpiece. 

A crinkle in a dress. Too tight, pressing against a chest. Against a heart. 

Two people, in love.

 _So that's what that looks like_.

Bruce 's head thumps down onto the carpet, as his eyes swim around, the entire grey ghastly room and all the bespoke furnishings swimming like a whirlpool in a sink. 

_And now I know how it feels._


End file.
